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				A Day with Wally Sampson A retired doctor shows Alan what herb shops are really selling.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: America the melting pot is also America the crossroads for ideas about healing. We have a huge range of alternatives for medical treatment available to us. That presents people like Wally Sampson with all kinds of difficulties. He's a retired oncologist and Stanford Medical School professor, but he's still hard at work. ( doorbell rings ) Hi, good morning. Ah, good morning, Alan. Come on in. ALDA: Wally started a journal to do what he says we all should do, look at alternative medicine with a cool, scientific eye. But given human nature, that's easier said than done. I know people who started out thinking, for instance, that acupuncture was foolishness. I mean, how could there be these meridians in the body and chi coursing through your body, and how could needles have any effect on it? Then they got desperate because they were in pain. Then they went to an acupuncturist and felt relief from their symptoms. And they went from being highly skeptical to now recommending it to their friends. What happens in those... what's going on there? That's a very deep experience for people. It's almost like having a transcendent or a religious discovery experience. When two events occur in close proximity, one beforehand is always interpreted as having something to do with the second one. Now, the trick is to tell the difference between what really was the cause and what was the natural history of what was going to happen anyway. And most of the time, what was going to happen anyway, when you're really sick, is you get better. 80% of the time, no matter what it is-- whether you have back pain or whether you have the flu or whether you have even a pneumonia-- most people get better from pneumonia, not everybody dies. Even some cancers seem to stop growing for awhile or may remit. But the natural way to think about these things is to tie up whatever you did just beforehand with the results. So that's the way people are. ALDA: How to solidly connectcause and effect is the central question in the scientific approach to healing. ALDA: Shall we see what's in here? Hello. MAN: Hi. Hi, Alan Alda. Yeah, Dennis. Hi, Dennis. Nice to meet you. ALDA: This is a typical Chinese herbal medicine shop, the kind you'll find all over China and the Far East. It's stocked with around 300 different herbal remedies. You want me to make a package for you? Yeah, why not? It can't hurt me, can it? ALDA: Dennis Zeng, the doctor and pharmacist, is making me up a package to treat back pain. He follows a traditional prescription he learned during several years of training in China. The ingredients will be boiled to make a strong herbal tea, as it's known. The result will be a complex mixture of over a hundred different chemical components. This particular mixture, like most that Dennis prescribes, has never been studied by science. That's not to say it doesn't work, it's just that we can't be sure, because of the way people often confuse cause and effect, as Wally described. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten ingredients? ALDA: Traditional Chinese medicines come mainly from the tropical forests of southern China. They're part of an ancient folk medicine system with features that scientists find hard to recognize. Tsong Kay Sa... ALDA: Each leaf or fruit or tree bark has a specific effect in re-directing the body's energy flows, or chi. ALDA: And this over here? Yeah, mu qua, mu qua. ALDA: Disease is caused by imbalancbetween yin and yang. The way to reestablish the balance and restore health is by redirecting the chi. Although no Western-trained doctor would recognize this system, patients don't care. In China most people combine Western and traditional cures, and many in the West do the same. ALDA: Do you findthat your customers also use Western medicine or do they mainly come for traditional? They also use Western medicine, together. Together? Yeah, mm-hmm. How would you be treated with... I just take the herbal tea. Herbal tea? Yeah, when I got sick, you know? ( both chuckle ) And what if that doesn't work? What do you do then? Doesn't work? Every time it works. Oh. ( laughs heartily ) That's good, I'm glad you're healthy. ( laughing ) ALDA: The popularity of herbal remedies has spread far beyond Chinese-American communities. There are now thousands of shops like these all over America. They're part of a $17 billion industry for what are called dietary supplements. What kind of things do people tend to buy when they come in? Nowadays, in the winter season, a lot of people have the flu. Usually the people take echinacea and goldenseal, or a combination. Wally, do you know about... What would you say about echinacea? It's had an interesting history because there's some evidence in test tube work that it can stimulate certain immune cells in the immune system. But in clinical trials, it hasn't worked as well. ALDA: Unlike prescription drugs, supplements don't have to have proven effects. Most of the huge array of products on the market either haven't been tested or show vague results. For example, a popular cancer treatment, IP-6, derived from plant fiber, may affect mouse cancer cells, but has shown no effects in humans. ALDA: "Natural substance, IP-6, offers hope as cancer therapy." YOO: This is for good immune systems, so your body will be able to fight against cancer. ALDA: Right. And do you have people coming in? Is that popular? Even I take it. Yeah? Yeah. What if somebody came in and said, "I have a pain in my shoulder," or, "I have, uh, muscle pain," "I have arthritis." Yeah, those are the products... "Chondroitin"? Yeah, glucosamine- chondroitin combination. Glucosamine-chondroitin. Yes, this is one of the most popular products we sell. Really? Yes. And, uh, do people feel it works? Yeah, I even take it. You take this, too? We haven't found anything yet you don't take. You take more than ten pills a day. Yeah, probably, I take it. Do you have anything that people come in asking for for their heart? Yeah, we have Co-Enzyme Q-10 over here. ALDA: There really is no ailment for which you can't find something to spend your money on. YOO: Yeah, Co-Enzyme Q-10 is a very expensive product. Co-Enzyme Q-10. Right. What is this? This has a very scientific name. It doesn't sound very natural. It doesn't sound like it comes off the Co-Enzyme Q-10 tree or anything. What is this, Wally? What is this? It's a simple chemical, organic chemical compound. It's also known as ubiquinone. It's present in everybody's body. But it became a little famous because it's slightly antioxidant, but it also has an effect in dog hearts. And a lot of people say it has effect on human heart for heart failure and so forth. But, again, a recent study reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that it didn't really help humans. ALDA: Maybe what they're really selling here is hope. In our next story, we'll look at a cancer remedy that offered exactly that.

				Herbal Hope Was PC-SPES an herbal cancer cure, or a prescription drug in sheep's clothing?
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: This is about a remedy made here called PC-Spes. PC-Spes is a nutritional supplement. It's for prostate cancer, although we cannot make that kind of a claim. It's, uh, the only claim we can make is the... that it's for a healthy prostate. ALDA: As long as supplements do not make specific claims of treatment or cure, they're only loosely regulated. The FDA does not assess vague statements like "for prostate health," but it's usually pretty clear what the message is. In this case, "PC" means "prostate cancer," and "spes" is Latin for "hope," and surely people want that. RORABAUGH: A neighbor of mine put his house up for sale one day, and I asked him, "Why are you putting your house up for sale?" He says, "Barre, I have prostate cancer and I'm going to die in six months." And he said, "You know, I've tried "every trement in the world. "I've been to 15 different doctors and I have nowhere to go." And he was selling his house and moving to a less expensive house so his wife wouldn't have a mortgage. And over the six-month period, he literally just became a shell of a man. And he discovered PC-Spes. He was doing some research and started taking PC-Spes. And this was in the '95-'96 time frame, and at that time he said, "Barre, this is an interesting company, and this product, my PSA counts are coming down." And so it was about a year later, he said, he says, "You know what, Barre? I'm going to have to find a job." He says, "I'm going to live." And, of course, today he's alive and doing very, very well. And that is a story that is compounded probably a couple thousand times over. ALDA: George Dutra was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1992. He would eventually take PC-Spes, but not before a long struggle. When the surgery was performed I was told that it would take out the cancer, put it in the bottle, put it on the shelf, and that's it, forget about it. But after surgery they found there was still some traces that had gotten into a lymph node. So that wasn't going to be a problem. We could then go to, uh, have some radiation and that would zap it, so... We did the 35 treatments of radiation and the count stayed down for a very short time. ALDA: George's treatment followed the standard course. First surgery, then radiation, then hormone therapy to suppress testosterone, chemotherapy, and finally second-line hormone therapy. You always hope each new level will defeat the cancer. When the second-line hormones failed, PC-Spes came up. DUTRA: My family doctor had read about it and he had called my attention to it. "You might look into it," he said, "but it's expensive." And when you're running out of options, yes, you do try it. And that's one of the things we were told, too-- we were running out of options. ALDA: George's PSA levels-- a test which measures the cancer's activity-- came down. As Wally Sampson says, diseases can fluctuate on their own, but George believes the PC-Spes was responsible. DUTRA: It gave me eight months or nine months of PSA that didn't take off, because I had been higher earlier. I have no, uh... I'm glad I tried it. ALDA: George's PSA levels eventually started to climb, and he's now back on a conventional, second-line hormone therapy. By the mid-1990s, so many prostate cancer patients were taking PC-Spes that urologists here in San Francisco decided they had to conduct a study. For a complex disease with many treatments, that's quite a challenge. MAN: We studied PC-Spes on the one hand in patients who had never before had hormones and were therefore hormone sensitive. The other group was patients who had already gone through the hormones, had already been treated with drugs that lowered their testosterone to a very low level and despite that had developed progressive disease. By their very nature, those patients tended to be... to have more advanced disease. ALDA: Taking PC-Spes, the patients in the first group with early cancer showed dramatic results. Everyone had PSA drops of at least 80%. Even the second group-- patients with advanced disease-- did well, with more than half showing PSA drops of at least 50%. PC-Spes was performing at least as well as a standard hormone therapy. It could be a terrific extra weapon in the fight against prostate cancer. So how did it work? One test, to measure testosterone levels in the first patient group, came back with intriguing results. SMALL: We found that lo and behold the testosterone level in all of them had fallen dramatically, suggesting that at least one of the mechanisms of action in this group of patients was that PC-Spes was acting as some form of a hormone eliminating the male hormone testosterone. ALDA: This is where thingget confusing. PC-Spes is a mixture of eight natural herbs-- seven from China, one from America. Among the many chemicals in that mixture, was there one which acts like a hormone? Or somewhere along the supply chain had someone introduced a hormone like DES? DES, a synthetic form of the female hormone estrogen, has long been a standard prostate cancer therapy. An analysis had not found DES, so Eric Small's team decided PC-Spes was promising enough for a large-scale trial. In the spring of 2000, 90 men with advanced disease were enrolled at three centers. The aim was to compare PC-Spes to DES. As the trial proceeded, rumors were flying among PC-Spes consumers. Some patients said it had stopped working. Had the formula been changed? Two labs hired by consumers reported finding DES. Then the FDA did an analysis but found no DES. Eric Small's team tested the PC-Spes they were using in the trial, and they found a small amount of DES in three of their four batches. So now the trial might just be comparing DES to DES. SMALL: We've been told by our chemists that this looks like synthetic DES. But what we don't know-- I certainly don't know-- is whether that could result as a process of the manufacturing of the herbs, of the processing of the herbs, whether it's a supplement-- we just don't know. And in point of fact, we don't know what that small amount of DES does. It's entirely possible that it does nothing. ALDA: Nevertheless they decided they had to halt the trial. Meanwhile, Botanic Lab denied having added anything synthetic to PC-Spes. But a few days after we filmed here, analysis of samples by the California Health Department came up with traces of a second prescription drug. The manufacturer finally halted production. The PC-Spes story shows what a challenge it is to get scientifically rigorous results working with herbal remedies. It's hard to control quality, because plants vary depending on conditions. You don't know what ingredients might be active, and you don't even know exactly what's in them. PC-Spes might still be a useful therapy, but we may never know. And that applies to most herbal remedies on the shelves. Wally Sampson is back at the hospital where he worked. As part of his constant advocacy of clarity and logic in medicine, he now hopes to interest doctors in learning about how to assess alternative therapies. SAMPSON: Good afternoon. I'm Wally Sampson and I used to do oncology here. I've given grand rounds and another noon conference earlier this year on the subject of alternative medicine. Alternative medicine is alternative at this time because it is not supported by adequate scientific information. I would like to start a small seminar series specifically concentrating on the analysis of information. ALDA: I took the opportunity to ask how the growing interest in alternatives affected their work. What do you think is the most important reason for people to be cautious about taking herbal medicines and other alternative cures? Drug interactions is what we would worry about the most. You know, a lot of times patients are taking multiple medications, especially in the elderly population. And then they go to the store and they will buy some herbal product. A lot of times they don't tell us what they're taking because they feel that they're buying it in a store that it must be quite benign. And we in the medicine side, don't know if it's totally benign, don't know, in fact, that it can or cannot interact. And so we're in a learning curve also to understand these new compounds. They're new to us. They're certainly not new to the world-- they're just new to us in medicine. ALDA: There are some notorious examples of bad interactions, causing liver damage or even transplant rejections. But overall this area is a big unknown. Alternatives do offer hope to patients, but there's false hope, too. These doctors see a serious problem with patients ignoring conventional therapies. I think that is one of the harms of the medications is people see it as an either/or sort of situation. So as an example, I had a patient who was 49 years old, diagnosed with early prostate cancer, who... I was trying to convince him to undergo either curative surgery or curative XRT and he refused and is on herbal medicine and has been doing that for about a year and is doing okay. But I'm pretty concerned about him, you know. And I think that's not only giving him false hope, but probably will... could lead to him dying from the prostate cancer. Has anybody else had an experience where a patient has turned away from conventional medicine in favor of... of herbal things and that kind of thing? WOMAN: Absolutely-- cancer patients. I've had some that have gone to Mexico, gone to clinics down in San Diego, gone for sweat therapy, I mean, colonics, and absolutely given up chemotherapy in order to try to pursue those avenues. And then come back after they've exhausted that, exhausted their money, found out that they were just getting sicker and that their cancer wasn't going away, and then they came back to us for conventional therapy. It's very sad. Sure, I had a young 25-year-old woman with active rheumatoid arthritis who came in and she wanted to know her diagnosis. So we did blood tests and X rays and we gave her the diagnosis. And she said, "Well, I prefer "not to use any of the traditional medicines. I want to do herbal." And I just simply said to her, "What can I do to keep the door open?" ALDA: It's hard to see how that uneasy relationship between conventional and alternative medicine can change any time soon. Perhaps 60 million people in America use alternative ways to heal, and the number is growing. In our next story, what science has to say about one of those ways-- healing through the spine.

				Adjusting the Joints A one-time chiropractor challenges the claims of his former colleagues.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Drop that shoulder. ( crack ) There we go. We have a patient here-- Paul. Hello, Paul. Hello. And... what's your complaint today? Oh, my neck hurts. Okay, very good. ALDA: John Badanes is conducting a chiropractic examination. He compares the lengths of Paul's legs, and finds a difference. Next, he makes adjustments in the alignment of Paul's skeleton. According to the theory, Paul's leg lengths should become even, with his neck pain cured. ( device clicks ) John Badanes is a fully trained, experienced chiropractor, but he left the business after seven years when he realized he had to face up to the fact that his profession made no sense to him. BADANES: This is an activator. ALDA: Yeah. It doesn't involve bone cracking or joint-popping. If I activate it, there is a... ( device clicks ) It's just a little tap. That's a little tap. In fact, I can adjust that down to... I can't even feel that. That's correct. ALDA: Chiropractors adjust "subluxations." A subluxation-- is that some kind of displacement of bones in the spine? A subluxation is what a chiropractor defines as a problem. In other words, it's a term that's used in many, many different ways. Correct. Now, historically, when Palmer invented this, introduced this term... Right. ...he was talking, was he, about some kind of blockage of some life force that was coming in from the universe? Correct, what he called "nerve interference." It was a life force expressed through the nerves and, uh... that was blocked-- what he called nerve interference-- and usually by a bony displacement. ALDA: Chiropractic-- which literally means "done by hand"-- was invented by Daniel Palmer in Davenport, Iowa, in 1895. READER: Do you want the cause of your disease removed, and get permanently cured in the quickest possible time? Chiropractic relieves pressure on nerves, the cause is removed, and perfect health established. ALDA: Palmer, a spiritualist and magnetic healer, said that chiropractic was revealed when he cured his office janitor of deafness. The janitor said his deafness had started when something gave way in his back. Palmer takes up the story. Palmer ( dramatized ): An examination showed a vertebra racked from its normal position. I reasoned that if the vertebra was replaced, the man's hearing should be restored. With this object in view, I racked it into position and soon the man could hear as before. In that adjustment originated the art of replacing vertebrae. ALDA: Subsequently a large theoreticastructure and industry have been built on the basic idea that pressure on spinal nerves causes disease. Palmer believed the pressure interrupts the flow of what he called "innate intelligence" or "life power" from the brain. Nowadays the language may be a little different, but the basic idea is the same. That's your contact point, okay? We are concerned about the relationship or the ability of the nervous system to express itself fully throughout the body as it particularly can be interfered with at the spinal level. The chiropractor is concerned about aberrations in the spine, minor misalignments that may not seem consequential to other providers that have profound impact, from our experience as chiropractors, on the health and well-being of the patient. ALDA: 30 years ago, an anatomist tried twisting cadaver spines around, but couldn't figure out how to obstruct the nerves short of actually breaking something. In fact, our vertebrae give the spinal nerves plenty of room. So now chiropractors say the effect is indirect. The pressure may not be on a spinal nerve route, or the pressure may not be on a spinal cord, but it may be a disturbance that changes the musculature, that changes the pattern of cerebro-spinal fluid movement. It may be a change in the positioning of a vertebra that begins to compromise and swell... excuse me, compromise a joint level, produces swelling that, in turn, produces pressure on a nerve route. So the early concepts of chiropractic of being direct nerve pressure have given way to concepts of indirect pressure. Hi, Kimberley. Hi, Doctor Rowe. Nice to see you again today. So tell me, how did you respond to our last visit? Really good, actually. I was feeling really good after, thank you. And since then, you've been feeling... I've been a little sick for about the past week. You've been sick? Tell me about that. I've got sinus congestion, a little headaches, and fatigue. And how are you feeling now? About the same, I've still got some sinus congestion, and I'm still tired. It's not getting any worse or any better. It's staying the same. Okay, I'm glad you're here. We'll take a look at your spine and see how you're really doing. Okay, now we're just going to feel how your spine is moving, so I'm just going to arch. You can just let me feel the motion here. There we go. I'm feeling for her spine to have a free, even motion between each segment. And if I get to a segment like that one right there that's not moving freely... It's tender. And then I'm going to ask her if it's tender. Well, she just volunteered that, but that would indicate to me that that's very likely subluxated. ALDA: Stephen Rowe now confirms the subluxation with his Nervo-Scope. It compares skin temperatures across the spine, and has a long history in chiropractic. ROWE: I'm looking for subtle differences at specific levels. ALDA: Palmer said disturbed nerves can show up as imbalances in heat. It's reminiscent of the Chinese concept of yin and yang, and has equally little basis in anatomy. Having located Kimberley's subluxation, Stephen Rowe now uses an X ray to plan the adjustment procedure. I'm looking for factors like whether she has a proper curve, proper neck curve, a proper thoracic curve, and a proper lumbar curve. Then I'm looking intersegmentally-- between each segment intersegmentally-- as to how they align. She has what's called a base posterior sacrum, where her sacrum is misaligned in relationship to the fifth lumbar. And that's what we'll be adjusting on her. BADANES: This, for a chiropractor, would be a curve that needs to be fixed. It needs to be straightened out. Now, is it possible to straighten it out with, with... With the methods that people do? With adjustments using people's hands? Well, like I say, I don't think that it is. I don't think that major changes, you know, in spinal configuration can be made. But that's not the point. The point is, is that it's never been demonstrated that the shape of the spine has anything to do with disease or health. ROWE: Good, just bring your pelvis a little... ALDA: Nevertheless, in a procedure repeated many times over in chiropractors' offices across the country, Kimberley gets her spine adjusted. ROWE: Okay, Kimberley, just relax, nice and easy. Let that belly go forward. ( crunch ) There we go. I feel great. ALDA: The popping noise that joints can make is often interpreted by chiropractors and patients to mean the bones have moved. In fact, it's just dissolved gas being released in the joint fluid. BADANES: These joints are similar to the joints in my finger. My finger is two little bones and is wrapped... there's a space between it, like this, and that's wrapped in a joint capsule with fluid. And when you pull them apart, as I did... ( snap ) there, it makes that popping sound. But, of course, my finger hasn't changed its position at all. Well, the same thing happens when you manipulate the spine. ( crunch ) BADANES: Patients believe that the bone was out of place, and that noise signals... ALDA: It snapped back into place... ...back into alignment. Yeah, into alignment. Exactly, because that's what the chiropractor... But you're saying you really can't change the position of the bone by this procedure that results in a crack. Not by that, not by that. Otherwise, you know, every time you cracked it you might be in danger of... of, you know, of coming apart. Lift up your right arm, please. ALDA: Kimberley gets a second adjustment. Okay, just right there, there you go. Drop that shoulder. ( crunch ) Excellent. ROWE: As a result of this, I would expect some of the symptoms that she initially talked about-- her congestive sinuses, the heaviness in her neck and in her head-- to be reduced. Chiropractic is a regular way to stay healthy. I get adjusted on a regular basis, approximately every two weeks to three weeks, depending on how I feel and how everything's going. If my adjustments are holding well, then we can make the time between adjustments last a little bit longer. ALDA: Robert Baratz is a physician who believes, with Wally Sampson, that patients like Kimberley are confusing cause and effect. The treatment is unconnected to health, he says, and chiropractic bears no relation to reality. BARATZ: The chiropractic theory of manipulation as being curative of disease, or in terms of diagnosing disease, is based on a false premise. The premise is that there's some kind of vital force flowing around the body, as yet undefined and unquantified and undetectable, that they claim they can manipulate by manipulating the spine. ALDA: Here's the leg-measuring procedure again. MAN: By comparing the like surfaces here, I get a right short leg. That tells me that there's an imbalance in the system, and it's a go-ahead to keep analyzing the patient and I know where to go with that now. ALDA: The imbalance needs adjustment. DONALDSON: This is an Activator III. It's the third generation of development. And what we've done here is made an instrument that has an ultra-fast thrust. And we know that if we can activate the nervous system faster, then we don't have to push it as hard. We don't have to get the cracking noises that are often associated with the chiropractic adjustment. But we're accomplishing the same thing. ( device clicks ) And then I go ahead and check the leg length again, and the legs are now even. It tells me that I've made a good correction. BARATZ: If someone says they can measure leg lengths as being different, and that's the basis for their diagnosis, what is the diagnosis? First of all, it's normal to have leg lengths that are of different lengths. That's true in almost everyone. Lift your head up, back down. BARATZ: The length of the leg is not determined by the spine. It's determined by the bones of the leg. And by manipulating the spine or the back, you're not going to change that, because those bones aren't going to change their length by any form of manipulation, unless you break them. ALDA: It's easy not only for the patient to be fooled, but the chiropractor, too. BADANES: Small changes in this position like this can fool the practitioner if their expectation, if... It's longer over here than over there. Correct. ALDA: If patients feel relief, it's fair to ask if it really matters if chiropractic makes sense. But there is one problem: some forms of chiropractic involve violent manipulation. Many techniques concentrate on the nerves of the neck, including this one, called "toggle recoil." MAN: The upper cervical spine specifically, which is what this technique focuses on, is the only area of the body where you can directly access the nervous system. It's got-- and this is just physiology and neurology-- it's got 400 to 500 times the amount of mechano-receptors, proprio-receptors, things of that nature, that go directly into and affect the way your brain stem functions. So if there's a problem in that area, we want to know about it. ALDA: The chiropractor believes this patient's neck bones are at the wrong angle and must be adjusted. BROWNING: You can see some lines drawn in here, and the number says 26 degrees. That's giving me an idea of the Atlas Plane Angle. ALDA: Chiropractors have always maintained that neck manipulation is safe, with maybe one in a million procedures causing injury-- no worse that many other health treatments. Scoot right in on my contact. I'm going to set the headpiece... And that's it. ALDA: But beginning in the mid-1990s with this book by an injured patient, the safety of neck manipulation has been increasingly questioned. BARATZ: Going to a chiropractor and having your neck manipulated is extremely dangerous. Now, can many people have it done and not have a bad outcome? Sure they can. Do you want to take that risk is the question. Do you want to be the one who gets the paralysis? Because every year there are hundreds of people who get their necks manipulated, have their vertebral arteries torn by chiropractors and end up paralyzed. Many chiropractic adjustments are made by first laterally flexing the head and turning it like this. ALDA: This manipulation puts a severe strain on one of the two vertebral arteries leading to the brain. When you move the neck suddenly, when you take it to tension and then move it suddenly, you're giving that little extra tension pull on the vertebral artery and you can create a little tear which repairs itself with a blood clot. And that blood clot can then dislodge and go up to the brain and deprive the brain of oxygen and that's called a stroke. ALDA: It's very hard to know how often this type of stroke is caused by chiropractors. Good statistics don't exist. But a recent Canadian study estimated that 20% of all strokes caused by artery damage could be a result of neck manipulation. That translates into more than 1,300 strokes a year in the U.S. There are many types of chiropractors with many different techniques, but they're all based on one idea. It's your position that it doesn't matter what kind of chiropractor you get-- what special way he or she might have of dealing with your problem-- none of them is going to work. It's my position that they're all self-referential. In other words, they define a particular problem that incidentally has never been verified to be a problem, and then they have their methods of locating that problem, and then they have their specific methods of fixing it. So it's like a closed loop, and so it always works, because you're just talking to yourself. There is no scientific basis for what chiropractors allege they are doing. It is totally based on a religious belief system. And as long as you call it that, fine, but don't call it health care, and don't call it a form of science, because it is not.

				Needles and Nerves Studies find acupuncture can reduce blood pressure, but how?
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: China International Medical University is a small company that offers an increasingly popular service: acupuncture. Dr. Jiang, who trained in China, will treat this young man for insomnia. ALDA: She measures down to the two Hsinshu, or heart back points. She inserts fine needles no thicker than a human hair and then uses an up-and-down movement to "tonify the heart Chi." Chi, in Chinese medicine, is the body's basic life energy. Now she moves down to the Kanshu, or liver back points, where she will relieve "stagnation of the liver Chi." The patient later reported his insomnia cleared up. Of all the alternative medical practices, acupuncture is probably the most widely accepted. It's often covered by insurers. In America, interest in acupuncture really took off after Nixon went to China in 1971. A New York Times reporter, James Reston, had been in Beijing during Henry Kissinger's preparatory visit. Reston had to have his appendix out, and after conventional surgery at the Anti-Imperialist Hospital, he was given acupuncture for post-surgical pain. He ended his glowing account of the experience by writing that the hospital... RESTON ( dramatized ): ...like everything else in China these days is on its way toward some different combination of the very old and the very new. ALDA: Acupuncture is very old. The first descriptions date back 4,000 years. These illustrations are about 1,500 years old, but the dense maps of meridian lines and acupuncture points that you see nowadays are from the 19th century. Depending on who you ask, there are up to a thousand usable points on the body. Bill Stroud gets acupuncture from Dr. Jiang every two weeks. Bill's got heart problems and diabetes, and he says these visits help. What science says right now is maybe. It says there could be something happening, but it's not clear what. STROUD: When they hit the mark, I get a tingle. ALDA: What do you mean, hitting the mark? STROUD: When she hits the nerve. After it reaches a certain depth and it gets to the nerve, that's when you feel a tingle? That's it. Then it goes down to my fingertips. Yeah. And my toes. Is it similar to the pins and needles you feel when your foot goes to sleep? No. What about, is it like... I'm trying to try out some feelings that I'm aware of. Is it like a little electric shock? Yeah, that's more like it. Yeah, it's a little shock. ALDA: We're observing Bill's treatment with a cardiologist who's a leading acupuncture researcher. Okay, so the Neikuan is right here. This is along the so-called pericardial meridian. That's what Bill is getting now? Yes, yeah. They're stimulating here, Neikuan, and then up here, at the Hsimen. This corresponds to a nerve identified by Western medicine that's actually in everybody's arm. What we've found is this, is that most meridians overlie major neural pathways. Most of them do. Not 100%, but most of them do. And then the acupuncture points would be sticking the median nerve at various different levels. ALDA: The central belief in acupuncture is that stimulating specific points can affect particular body functions. One of the few scientific demonstrations of this came when colleagues of John Longhurst used a brain scan to detect activity while stimulating a traditional, vision-related point on the toe. LONGHURST: They showed that the visual cortex up in the brain lit up. So that's kind of provocative. And that has been considered for centuries by the Chinese as a way to affect vision. Exactly. ALDA: Bill's Hsimen point is stimulated in order to help his heart Chi. It's not language scientists understand, but that doesn't mean nothing's happening. DR. JIANG: Heavy thrusting, light lifting. This is to build up the heart Chi. How do you know you've got the heart Chi? How do you know you've got the right spot for that? I feel some heaviness under my fingers. I feel the chi. I feel I've... You feel some resistance? Yeah, I've captured the chi. I see, so you're responding to the chi in his body, and that's how you know you've got it. ALDA: Twenty minutes later, and Bill's happy. How you doing, Bill? Fine. Yeah? Mm-hmm, real good. Do you feel relaxed? You said you often feel relaxed. Real relaxed, yeah. Why don't you... I think I almost dropped off to sleep while you fellas were talking. ( both chuckle ) ALDA: We're going to look at oneof John Longhurst's experiments involving blood pressure. ALDA: Does the act ofmeasuring somebody's blood pressure alone have an effect on the blood pressure? LONGHURST: Mm-hmm, and if you wear a white coat, it increases it even more. ALDA: The background to this experiment is some key results John Longhurst has found in animals. Stimulating the Hsimen and the Neikuan heart points released natural opiates in the brain. These opiates were able to reduce the animal's response to stress, suppressing blood pressure. He's sure this is real. He could stop the effect when he blocked the opiates, and animals, of course, don't have any ideas or beliefs about acupuncture. Were you surprised when you came across this confirmation that it stimulates the body's opiates? Let me just say that I, like most Western scientists and Western physicians, had absolutely no belief that acupuncture had any validity to it. I didn't believe it worked. It was only after I read the literature and started to do my own studies that I started to believe in it. But I did not come at this from the viewpoint that, a priori, that it worked. ALDA: Eric, our experimental subject, is having his Hsimen and Neikuan points located by Peng Li, Longhurst's Chinese collaborator. Any feeling now? ERIC: A little. When you leave here after one of these trials, do you feel any different from the way you did when you came in? I don't feel much different, and that's not normal after a workout like what I'm going to be doing. ALDA: They're going to use electric acupuncture to stimulate the nerves because it's more controllable than the manual method. Switch on. ALDA: The twitching shows Eric's median nerve, which runs from neck to fingertips, is being stimulated. Eric, we're going to shut the light, okay? Okay. ALDA: Eric gets 30 minutes of acupuncture in a low-stress setting which won't elevate his blood pressure. For comparison, other subjects get the same thing but without the acupuncture. Now the test. Eric has to pedal until he can pedal no more. At that point, his blood pressure will be at its peak. 105/70. ALDA: It's the first numbethat matters. 120/65. 128/68. 140/60. 148/60. 150/58. Uncle. Okay, let me get a last blood pressure. ALDA: You do want to gethis blood pressure before he's lying on the floor, right? Yes, I do. You can do it, Eric. 158/55. TECHNICIAN: Thank you. ALDA: The results of the study were a surprise. Subjects who got acupuncture at the Hsimen and Neikuan heart points, as expected, showed significantly lower peak blood pressure, compared to the no-acupuncture group. But as an additional control, another group received acupuncture at the Hoku point, which is supposed to affect the intestines, not the heart. And that point turned out to be just as good at lowering blood pressure. LONGHURST: We found that that was as potent as our cardiovascular active one. For a cardiovascular response? For the cardiovascular response to exercise, exactly. So now what will you do? You'll have to pick another spot. Exactly, so we do have another comparison, and that is no acupuncture whatsoever. And there, both of them seem to be better than no acupuncture whatsoever. But at the moment, that seems to indicate that if you stick a pin in a person anyplace, you're liable to get this cardiovascular response. At least in two places. At least in two places. ALDA: So acupuncture has effects, but not in the way Chinese theory describes. That's where John Longhurst's research stands right now, but his conclusion that acupuncture stimulates the body's own opiate system opens up some intriguing ideas. Scientists are now coming to believe that most alternative therapies, where they have any effect, operate through that same opiate system. There's another name for this. It's the "placebo effect," and it can be triggered by many things-- belief, expectation, habit, discussion, touch. Acupuncture, therefore, would be a kind of double dose of placebo. LONGHURST: Some of my colleagues in alternative medicine would not like me saying this, but almost any sort of alternative medicine that is being used today-- a significant portion of its effect is through a placebo. Whether you're talking about healing touch or aromatherapy or herbal medications or acupuncture-- just any of these things-- transcendental meditation, any of them, there is a potential for a placebo effect. But I will go one further step and say that I think despite this, I think that some of these alternative therapies, including acupuncture, there is a real effect over and above placebo. It's just that the window between what is placebo and what is real is somewhat narrow. What dyou look forward to finding out as time goes on? What are you really trying to... what do you want just to narrow down to? I would like to see it-- acupuncture and complementary therapies that have proven to be beneficial-- to be taught in medical schools today, because certainly when I went to medical school, we didn't even talk about this form of therapy. Yet we know that as many people see an acupuncturist or a physician who is going to give some form of complementary therapy, as see primary-care physicians today. And most people don't realize that so many patients are accessing this other form of therapy. So don't we need to know something about it? Don't our physicians need to be able to ask questions?

				Healing Touch Therapeutic Touch is the subject of serious medical studies, but its practitioners proved unable to detect the 'energy field' that it depends on.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: THIS IS COLUMBIA-PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL IN NEW YORK CITY. IT'S ONE OF THE COUNTRY'S LEADING MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS. HERE, PATIENTS WITH SERIOUS HEART PROBLEMS ARE RECEIVING SOME SURPRISING TREATMENT. IT'S CALLED THERAPEUTIC TOUCH ALTHOUGH THERE'S NO ACTUAL TOUCHING INVOLVED. ELLEN McMAHON, A NURSE IS FOLLOWING PROCEDURES BASED ON TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE. McMahon: IT'S OUR BELIEF THAT YOUR BODY GOES BEYOND YOUR SKIN. Alda: ELLEN IS SENSING, AND THEN MANIPULATING, ENERGY PATTERNS. McMahon: USING YOUR HANDS-- YOU MIGHT WANT TO CALL THEM KIND OF LIKE GEIGER COUNTERS-- YOU JUST KEEP GOING OVER IT WORKING WITH THE AREAS WHERE YOU FEEL NEED AND THEN SMOOTHING IT. IT'S OUR BELIEF THAT UNDERNEATH, IF WE CAN MAKE YOU BALANCED THAT IT CAN HELP THE WHOLE OF YOUR BODY. AND IF YOU'RE IN A STATE OF RESTFULNESS HEALING WILL PROCEED. Alda: THEY'RE TRYING TO STUDY WHETHER THERAPEUTIC TOUCH CAN HELP HEART-BYPASS PATIENTS. BUT THEY'VE RUN INTO THE WELL-KNOWN PLACEBO EFFECT WHEREBY ABOUT A THIRD OF PATIENTS RESPOND FAVORABLY TO ANYTHING THAT APPEARS TO BE A TREATMENT. SO FOR COMPARISON, SOME PATIENTS MUST RECEIVE SHAM TREATMENT. LORISSA KLAUSS IS RUNNING THE STUDY. Klauss: THE SHAM THERAPEUTIC TOUCH PRACTITIONERS DON'T HAVE THE TRAINING, FOR ONE, IN THERAPEUTIC TOUCH AND THEY DON'T ALSO HAVE, HOPEFULLY THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT THERAPEUTIC TOUCH IS. Alda: SOME PATIENTS GET TRAINED PRACTITIONERS SOME GET THE SHAM VERSION, SOME GET NOTHING. HOW THE THREE GROUPS DO AFTER SURGERY WILL BE COMPARED. ALL THREE GROUPS GET THE SAME SURGICAL TREATMENT. WHILE THE OPERATING ROOM STAFF GOES ABOUT THEIR NORMAL DUTIES THEY'RE REGULARLY JOINED BY A NEW TEAM MEMBER AT THE HEAD OF THE TABLE WORKING ON THE PATIENT'S ENERGY BALANCE. THAT'S HOW THE STUDY WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK. BUT THEY'VE RUN INTO PROBLEMS. THE SHAM PRACTITIONERS HAVE COME AND DONE THEIR TREATMENT AND THEN THEY COME BACK AND REPORT TO ME AND THEY SAY "WELL, I THINK I FELT SOMETHING. HOW DO YOU ACCOUNT FOR THAT? " Alda: A KEY COMPONENT OF THERAPEUTIC TOUCH IS A CONSCIOUS INTENTION TO HEAL. IF THE SHAM PRACTITIONERS ARE FEELING SOMETHING MAYBE THEY'RE HEALING, TOO. YOU'LL NEVER KNOW IF THE TRAINED PRACTITIONERS ARE DOING ANY BETTER OR IF IT'S ALL JUST PLACEBO EFFECT. SO NOW THEY'RE TRYING ANOTHER APPROACH. THIS IS A LAB CULTURE OF LIVE CANCER CELLS. ERIC LIU IS PREPARING THEM FOR TREATMENT. ( slow Chinese tune begins ) FRANK HUO IS AN EXPERT IN YUAN CHI ONE OF THE CHINESE ENERGY THERAPIES THAT THERAPEUTIC TOUCH IS BASED ON. ( choir singing in Chinese ) IN HIS OWN PRACTICE, FRANK TREATS CANCER PATIENTS. BY HAVING HIM FIGHT CANCER CELLS THEY CAN DIRECTLY MEASURE ANY EFFECT HE HAS. IT'S THE HOSPITAL'S ATTEMPT TO BRING A RIGOROUS APPROACH TO A SUBJECT THAT MOST SCIENTISTS WOULD REGARD AS BEYOND SCIENCE. ( singing in Chinese continues on tape ) Man: LEFT HAND UP ON THE BELLY BUTTON RIGHT HAND OVER THE PLATE. NEXT ONE IS TWO HANDS. Alda: THE CELL STUDY STILL REQUIRES SHAM PRACTITIONERS FOR COMPARISON. HERE, ERIC IS INSTRUCTING A MEDICAL STUDENT. WHILE YOU'RE HOLDING THE POSES I WANT YOU TO COUNT BACK IN YOUR MIND FROM 100 DOWN TO ZERO BY SEVENS, AND THE REASON I'M DOING THAT IS BECAUSE I WANT TO ELIMINATE ANY INTENTION BECAUSE WITH YOUR MIND OCCUPIED DOING THE SUBTRACTION YOU WON'T BE THINKING ABOUT THE CELLS. YOU'LL JUST BE THINKING ABOUT THE MATH. Alda: ASSUMING THE SHAM PRACTITIONERS DON'T SPONTANEOUSLY ACQUIRE ANY HEALING INTENTIONS WITH CELLS AS THEY DID WITH HEART PATIENTS THEN THIS STUDY STANDS A BETTER CHANCE OF BEING ACCEPTED AS SCIENTIFICALLY VALID. THE FIRST RESULTS SHOW NO EFFECT BY SHAMS OR THERAPEUTIC TOUCH PRACTITIONERS. BUT FRANK HUO, THE YUAN CHI EXPERT SHOWED A PECULIAR DOUBLE EFFECT. SOME CELLS GREW LESS VIGOROUSLY WHILE SOME GREW MORE. THIS COULD BE NOTHING, A MISTAKE OR A COINCIDENCE OR IT COULD MEAN SOMETHING. IT NEEDS MORE STUDY. THE FOUNDATION OF THERAPEUTIC TOUCH IS THE PRACTITIONER'S ABILITY TO SENSE A PATIENT'S SUPPOSED ENERGY. THIS IS HOW PRACTITIONERS DESCRIBE THE EXPERIENCE. Woman: THERE'S LIKE A PULSING OR SOMETIMES THERE'S A TEMPERATURE CHANGE OR SOMETIMES IT LITERALLY FEELS LIKE ENERGY LIKE IF YOU'VE EVER KIND OF ZAPPED YOUR HAND WHEN YOU'VE TURNED ON A LIGHT OR SOMETHING. THERE'S JUST A THICKNESS AS I MOVE PAST AN AREA... A WARMTH EMANATING FROM THE PERSON'S BODY IN THAT PARTICULAR AREA AN AREA OF IMBALANCE IN THE TOTAL BODY. Alda: IN POUDRE VALLEY, NEAR DENVER LINDA ROSA, A NURSE, AND HER HUSBAND LARRY SUGGESTED A TERRIFIC SCIENCE PROJECT FOR THEIR DAUGHTER EMILY: TO SEE IF THERAPEUTIC TOUCH PRACTITIONERS COULD DETECT HER ENERGY FIELD. THE ONLY WAY I COULD REALLY FIND OUT IF THEY REALLY COULD FEEL MY ENERGY FIELD IS IF THEY COULDN'T SEE. Alda: THE HANDS BELONG TO A TRAINED THERAPEUTIC TOUCH PRACTITIONER. A COIN TOSS DETERMINES WHERE EMILY WILL POSITION HER HAND. THEN THE PRACTITIONERS HAVE TO SAY WHERE THE HAND IS. I FEEL THIS. LEFT. RIGHT. Alda: TO GENERATE RELIABLE STATISTICS 14 PRACTITIONERS EACH GET TEN TRIALS. OKAY. LEFT. Emily Rosa: I GOT 4. 1 FOR AN AVERAGE OF CORRECT GUESSES. FIVE IS CHANCE AND THEY GOT BELOW CHANCE. Alda: THE PRACTITIONERS FAILED TO DETECT EMILY'S SUPPOSED ENERGY SO IT'S HARD TO SEE HOW THERAPEUTIC TOUCH CAN WORK. EMILY'S RESULTS MAY BE PUBLISHED IN A SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL BUT ONLY AFTER THE WORK HAS BEEN INDEPENDENTLY REVIEWED. PEER REVIEW IS ONE WAY SCIENCE PROTECTS ITSELF FROM FAULTY CONCLUSIONS. BUT PERHAPS SCIENCE'S MOST IMPORTANT SAFEGUARD IS AN UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE ITSELF. IT WAS RAY HYMAN, THE OREGON PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR WHO BROUGHT THIS HOME TO ME. THE INTERESTING THING THAT I'M PICKING UP FROM YOU AND I'M JUST GETTING THIS-- I DON'T KNOW HOW I'M GETTING IT-- IS THAT... Hyman: THROUGH TELEPATHY. YES, I'M SURE... THAT IF WE'RE NOT REALLY CAREFUL WE FOOL OURSELVES BY WANTING SOMETHING TO BE TRUE. DEFINITELY SO. AND THE MOST CAREFUL PEOPLE CAN FOOL THEMSELVES. AND AS, YOU KNOW, AS WE KNOW THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WAS BASICALLY SET UP TO PROTECT PEOPLE FROM FOOLING THEMSELVES IN SPECIAL AREAS. THEY LEARNED BY EXPERIENCE THAT YOU HAVE TO SET UP CERTAIN SAFEGUARDS WITHIN CERTAIN AREAS. THAT'S WHY DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES HAVE DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES FOR DOING IT. BUT MOST OF THESE TECHNIQUES WERE DEVISED TO PROTECT US FROM OURSELVES. COME VISIT US ONLINE. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN FRONTIERS CAN BE FOUND ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB AT THE ADDRESS ON YOUR SCREEN.

Take a look at these related stories from the Frontiers Archive:

				Cold Comfort Some cold remedies may be all in your head.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: or the suddenly scratchy throat we wonder, "How did I catch it this time? "How bad is it going to be? "Should I take some vitamin C, suck a lozenge drink some herbal tea? " And then there's the big one. If scientists can send a man to the moon or invent the Internet or peer at distant galaxies, why can't they cure the common cold? Well, I've come here to Charleston, South Carolina, to find out. Because Charleston is about to experience a sudden mini-epidemic, an outbreak of runny noses and stuffy heads that could take us one step closer to an answer. What's unusual about this outbreak of colds is that it didn't just happen. WOMAN: Okay, put it in the cup. ALDA: These volunteers, whose noses are being rinsed out with a saline solution are being paid to catch a cold. If you wash his nostrils out he'll have a better chance of catching cold? Mm-hmm, because the nose will be nice and clean. This is a horrible thing to learn first thing in the morning. Okay, go ahead. ( chuckling ) I mean, I would have thought that getting your nose clean-- you know, like they say "Keep your nose clean"-- I would think that would help. ALDA: The man dispensing the colds is Ronald Turner an old hand at conducting studies on candidates for cures. What he's carefully placing up the nostrils of his volunteer subjects is a strain of rhinovirus one of the commonest causes of the common cold. Now you already had one of these? WOMAN: I had one-- I had one already. So how many do you give? Two-- we just go around twice. You really want to make sure you make these poor people sick. All right, this is the same as before, okay? ALDA: Actually, Ron Turner is hoping some of his volunteers won't get sick. Because for the last two weeks some of them have been taking twice-daily doses of one of those herbal extracts that a lot of us believe helps fend off or shorten a cold. Some of them are getting active medication some are getting placebo, but everybody gets the virus. Do you know, are you aware of who's getting the placebo and who's getting the medication? No, no, we're all blinded. You don't have any idea? Uh-uh. MAN: This is what they look like. ALDA: The famous Jujube medication. MAN ( laughing ): Yeah. So what do you think is in there? I'm really not sure. Hopefully some medication that will take care of me. But... for all I know it could just be sugar pills. ALDA: This need to ensure that no one knows who's getting what is absolutely critical in a trial like this. These are your pills for the next five days. ALDA: It's especially important that the volunteers aren't picking up any clues from how the pills taste or make them feel. Do you think you were getting the active medication or the inactive medication? I think I was getting the inactive. I have no idea, I really don't. No, I had no side effects no symptoms of any kind either way, so... WOMAN: Okay, if you had to give me a guess? Active. Inactive. I think I was getting inactive. Active. WOMAN: And why? I don't know-- It was just that whenever I took it I felt, like, fuller. I'll have to say the active medication. WOMAN: Why would you say that? It'd kind of depress me if I was having the other medication. I would say the inactive. WOMAN: Why would you say that? Just because I didn't feel any difference. Do you think it matters whether or not you believe you're taking the active ingredient? Yes. I think if I thought I was on it I would definitely experience a placebo effect and feel better than maybe I should. And thinking that I'm not on the medication I might be more inclined to feel the symptoms more severely. ALDA: Lindsey's right. If people are able to figure out what they're getting then it could dramatically influence the results of the trial. I'll go with active. WOMAN: Why do you say that? I'm hopeful. ALDA: In fact, in Ron Turner's opinion many of the clinical trials of popular cold remedies are fatally flawed by this very problem. His list includes even that old stand-by, vitamin C +and, distressingly, two of my personal favorites-- zinc lozenges and Echinacea. He's tested both in carefully controlled trials like his current one and found they don't work. All right, I've got one left. ( both laughing ) If you kill this, I'm never going to be able to fight off a cold again. Vitamin E. Well, vitamin E is interesting and we actually have looked at vitamin E as well. There's some biologic rationale for vitamin E and for vitamin C, for that matter in the sense that they are both antioxidants, and we do think that oxidative stress in the cell has something to do with production of the symptoms of the cold. And so we did a study of vitamin E where we gave vitamin E supplements for a couple of weeks to a group of volunteers. We drew blood from them. We showed that the vitamin E levels in their blood were substantially higher than in the placebo group and then we challenged them in our model with our virus and had absolutely no effect. So it... it was no good as a prophylactic, but... Or as a treatment. Or as a treatment either? Right. I'm dead. ( Turner laughs ) That's it, I've got nothing left. Well, the good news is that you'll get over your cold anyway. Definitely have the cold... I have it. I don't feel ill at all. If I'm supposed to be ill, I'm not. I have the cold. ALDA: Three days have passed since our volunteers were infected with the cold virus. They've been reporting in every morning since. WOMAN: It's been about 72 hours since the inoculation. Do you think you received a cold? Yeah, I do-- I definitely had it yesterday. Okay, I want you to rate your symptoms this morning based on the severity since your last visit. Any symptoms of sneezing? I'd say about a two. Okay, runny nose? One. Nasal stuffiness or obstruction? Ah, two. Cough? One. ALDA: There are a dozen symptoms on the list-- enough to get a pretty objective measure of the severity of the cold. Definitely getting a little worse, huh? Yes. You can go back and get your nasal wash. ALDA: The nasal wash will reveal how strongly the virus took hold. WOMAN: Good morning. Good morning. ALDA: Meanwhile, we wondered how our volunteers feel now about whether they are on the test medication or the placebo. YOUNG WOMAN: I think I'm receiving just a placebo. I think it kind of got better because I was taking... I'm not sure whether I was taking that medication or not but I think I did. I believe I had the inactive medicine. Because otherwise I think I probably wouldn't have gotten the cold or it wouldn't have been as severe. Based on how mild my symptoms are I think maybe I did get the active. Oh, yeah, I'm really glad I got it. Because I'd be walking around with tissues hanging out of every pocket and just not a pretty sight. I think I got the inactive medicine because I've been getting worse as the days go on. I guess I got the active medication because all I've had is a runny nose and that's it. ALDA: Perhaps not surprisingly most of those with the worst colds thought they were on the placebo while most subjects with mild colds guessed they had the medication. But in fact, it was all in their heads. Later, when who got what was matched up with the severity of their infections there was no difference between those who got the test substance and those who didn't. That's right. The mystery herbal ingredient in those big brown pills did nothing in Ron Turner's study-- joining on his hit list Echinacea, zinc lozenges and vitamin E. You know what's funny about this? And this is just... totally personal. I'm going to keep taking this stuff because I haven't got any other... any other feeling of control over the cold. And for me, getting a cold-- because I have to use my voice in my work-- it's something that I'll... I'll clutch at straws over. How does that strike you as a scientist? Well, I guess I don't have any problem with that. As I said, my job here is to try to figure out whether there is a biologic effect. Whether people choose to use that information or whether they get some benefit-- whether it's psychological or mental-- that's fine. You know, the saying is, of course that if you take this medicine you'll get over your cold in seven days and if you don't it will take a week. ( chuckles ): So... That's the best you can come up with after all these years? Well, I think we're doing better than that. I've heard that joke. I think we're doing better than that. ALDA: One way in which science may at last be doing better is in attacking cold viruses themselves. A big reason the common cold hasn't been cured in the past is that so many different viruses can cause it. And for many, many years people thought that that was going to make it impossible to develop therapy for the common cold. ALDA: Yeah, that's what I've read, constantly is that there are too many colds to be able, too many viruses to be able to find something common in all of them. Right, and I remember when I first started on this project somebody who I, that I was good friends with in college who... we diverged slightly-- he went into medicine and I went into basic biochemistry-- I told him I was working on this and he laughed his head off at me and he said, there are over a hundred serotypes. No one will ever do that. Now your friend is giving out antihistamines and you're solving the common cold. Probably, yeah. ALDA: Steve Worland's company, Agouron is trying to attack the commonest group of cold viruses the rhinoviruses. Their target is actually a protein called protease that all rhinoviruses use to make copies of themselves. The company started by making tiny crystals of this crucial protease then used an X-ray crystallography machine to get a precise three- dimensional picture of it. MAN: ... you can actually look down and you can see the tip of the loop. The crystal is very small only a couple of tenths of a millimeter. What we're seeing here is an electronic image of the, uh... ALDA: Now, there are moments when we're making Frontiers when we get just a little out of our depth. ALDA: What do you do, roughly to get a three-dimensional picture from those dots? Well, basically what we do is we use computers to carry out a three-dimensional Fourier summation uh... and the individual coefficients in that Fourier series are related to the intensities that we're measuring here. And that's the rough version. ALDA: Okay, well, once they did that, this was the result: a 3-D image of the protease the virus needs in order to replicate itself in our nose cells. WORLAND: That was enough to say that there are regions where the protein goes in rather than comes out where we could then plug in, if you will, our drug molecule. Now, the reason you want to plug your drug molecule in is if you don't do that this is going to be a place where the protease is going to hook up with what it needs to hook up with to do its work and help the virus replicate. That's precisely right. ALDA: The drug molecule Agouron designed which nestles neatly into the critical protein successfully stops the virus from replicating in a test tube. The next step was to try it in noses. Good morning, everybody. ALDA: In a clinical trial very similar to the one Ron Turner ran the antiviral drug was tested on college students at the University of Virginia-- except that here, the subjects got to stay in a hotel. 24 hours after getting infected they received several daily doses of the experimental drug in a nasal spray. Here, too, some of the subjects got a placebo spray instead of the real thing. Do you feel generally bad? I feel like I got a cold. Okay, that's what I need to know. ALDA: The severity of their colds was judged by questionnaire by measuring the virus directly and by weighing the tissues they used. And the results were promising-- a significant reduction in cold symptoms among those on the drug. How you feeling this morning? I'm feeling fine. No cough, no sore throat, no nothing? Nothing. All right, that sounds good. ALDA: Even though the drug seems to work getting it to market will be far from easy. It will have to be cheap, it will have to work fast and, as Steve Worland knows only too well it will have to be completely safe. It's a real drag to have a cold, but it's not life-threatening. In that case, we're even more concerned about a safety burden because we're not treating something like cancer or HIV where a certain degree of side effects traded for saving somebody's life that person would almost always say, "I'll take it. " It's not worth trading a serious side effect to get rid of a cold. So this really has to be a compound that has virtually no side effects or people are just going to elect not to choose it. If you tell people, "Well, you know you're going to feel numbness in your hands" for, just as a hypothetical example "but your cold will go away" most people will say, "I'll take the cold.

				Mr. Cele's Garden Africa’s traditional healers depend on supplies gathered in rapidly-disappearing wild areas. One healer is starting to cultivate his remedies.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: TO HOUSE NON-WHITES ONLY. NOW A BIG CHALLENGE IS TO DEVELOP BASIC SERVICES IN PLACES LIKE THIS. HERE IN UMLAZI, I VISITED A MAN WHO'S PLAYING HIS PART IN HIS OWN INIMITABLE WAY. MR. CELE? ALAN ALDA, HOW ARE YOU? PLEASED TO MEET YOU. PLEASURE TO MEET YOU. THIS IS AN AMAZING PLACE. I'M SURPRISED TO SEE SO MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF THINGS. Alda: MR. CELE IS A TRADITIONAL HEALER AS WERE HIS FATHER AND GRANDFATHER BEFORE HIM. MOST OF HIS REMEDIES ARE HERBAL. HE CAN HELP YOU WHEN YOU HAVE A COLD OR SATISFY MORE SPIRITUAL NEEDS. THIS IS FOR OUR ANCESTORS. WHAT IS THAT? OUR ANCESTORS. IT'S INCENSE GRASS. INCENSE. YES. THAT WAY, WHEN WE TALK WITH OUR PEOPLE WHO ARE THE LATE WE BURN THIS ONE AND PRAY TO THEM... HMM. TO HELP US. THEY MUST GET POWER FROM GOD NOT TO SAY THAT THEY ARE GOD BUT TO GET POWER FROM GOD. Alda: SOME THINGS IN THE SHOP MR. CELE KEEPS ONLY FOR OTHER HEALERS. WHAT IS THIS? DO YOU EAT THIS? IN ENGLISH, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CALL IT. I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS. IT'S POISONOUS. THANK YOU, I'M SORRY I PICKED IT UP. NO, NO, NO... I'LL NEVER... WHEN YOU EAT IT. NOT THE SKIN, YOU'RE SURE ABOUT THAT? SURE. OTHERWISE YOU MAY HAVE TO GIVE ME ANOTHER PLANT TO GET RID OF THAT. WHAT DOES THIS DO? WHY WOULD YOU SELL A POISON PLANT? WELL... IT'S FOR THOSE WHO KNOWS HOW TO CONTROL IT. ( both laughing ) WHAT DOES IT DO FOR YOU... IF YOU TAKE THE JUST-RIGHT AMOUNT? AN ENEMA? GREAT, I'M GLAD... THAT'S WONDERFUL. AN ENEMA TO CLEAN OUT THIS LOWER PART OF THE BODY. SO YOU WOULD TAKE A LITTLE BIT. YOU WOULD TELL THEM HOW MUCH TO TAKE? WOULD YOU MAKE A TEA OUT OF IT? MYSELF, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE THIS ONE. ( laughs ): OKAY... I SELL IT TO THOSE WHO... WHO DO KNOW HOW TO USE IT, OKAY. THIS IS LIKE A CALAMINE. THIS IS FOR PROTECTING THE SKIN FROM THE HEAT OF THE SUN. WE CRUSH THIS ONE. JUST PART TO THE BABY... BABY WILL SLEEP PEACEFUL. REALLY? THESE ARE GOOD FOR SHARP PAINS. SHARP PAINS? ANYWHERE IN THE BODY? UH... SAY THERE ARE SOME SHARP PAINS HERE ESPECIALLY. Alda: BEHIND THE SHOP, MR. CELE'S ASSISTANTS CHOP, CUT AND GRIND AN ENORMOUS VARIETY OF INGREDIENTS FRESHLY COLLECTED FROM THE WILD. THE NEW GOVERNMENT IS DEPENDING ON PEOPLE LIKE MR. CELE TO PROVIDE THE BULK OF SOUTH AFRICA'S BASIC HEALTH CARE. HERE'S A TYPICAL PROBLEM. Cele: Mother: Cele: Mother: WHAT DID YOU FIND WHEN YOU EXAMINED THE BABY? WELL, TOO MUCH OF WINDY. THAT CAUSES A CHILD TO BE UNCOMFORT. AND IT'S GOT A SORE IN THE BACK. WHEN IT'S SLEEPING, IT'S JUST CAN'T SLEEP. WHAT'S THIS? THAT ONE IS FOR THE CHILD WHEN IT'S COUGHING. AND THIS? IT'S LIKE A MILK OF MAGNESIA TO KEEP THE STOMACH COOL. AND IN THE PACKAGE? IN THE PACKET FOR THE CLOUDY WEATHER AND HOT WEATHER WHEN A CHILD CAN'T SLEEP. Alda: THIS IS ONE OF DURBAN'S MEDICINAL PLANT MARKETS. ACROSS THE COUNTRY THERE'S A VAST NETWORK OF GATHERERS AND TRADERS HANDLING TONS OF MATERIAL EVERY DAY. HEALERS USED TO DO THEIR OWN COLLECTING. NOW IT'S AN INDUSTRY SERVING OVER 30 MILLION PEOPLE AND THE SCALE IS WORRYING SOUTH AFRICAN BOTANISTS. TWO YEARS AGO, A TEAM FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NATAL SET OUT TO IDENTIFY EVERY PLANT IN THE MARKET AND TO GET AN IDEA OF WHICH WERE COMING UNDER THE HEAVIEST DEMAND. THEY'VE MANAGED TO CONVINCE THE TRADERS THAT THEY'RE NOT FROM THE POLICE. OFTEN PLANTS IN THE MARKET COME OUT OF PROTECTED AREAS. HERE'S ONE PLANT THEY DON'T SEE OFTEN. Alda: THEY GET THE IDENTITY CLEAR AND THEN ASK, "HOW MUCH DO YOU SELL? " Woman: Researcher: Alda: THEN WHAT ARE ITS EFFECTS? Researcher: Woman: Researcher: Alda: AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? Researcher: Alda: ALTHOUGH THEY'VE IDENTIFIED OVER 300 SPECIES SO FAR IT'S OFTEN NOT STRAIGHTFORWARD. I THINK WE HAVE THIS... Alda: BARK FROM THE SAME TREE CAN LOOK DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON THE TREE'S AGE OR HOW IT'S BEEN TREATED. Researcher: Mandi: Alda: THIS PIECE HAS BEEN PARTIALLY SCRAPED, EXPLAINED THE TRADERS. SAME ONE. IT HAS LOST... THEY HAVE SCRAPED THIS ONE. Alda: SO FAR THE TEAM, WITH MR. CELE'S HELP, BY THE WAY HAS IDENTIFIED HALF A DOZEN SPECIES THAT ARE CLOSE TO EXTINCTION AND THAT'S WHERE MR. CELE COMES BACK IN. THIS IS MR. CELE'S GARDEN. HE GROWS HIS OWN MEDICINAL PLANTS HERE NOT SOMETHING HEALERS HAVE TRADITIONALLY DONE. MR. CELE, HOW MANY PLANTS DO YOU THINK YOU GROW HERE? OH, I CANNOT TELL AT THE MOMENT BUT I'VE GOT A LOT. A COUPLE OF THOUSANDS OF PLANTS. REALLY? YES. Alda: I'M HERE WITH RICHARD SIMMONS WHO RUNS A PLANT NURSERY FOR THE CITY. THE YOUNG TREE IS A PEPPER BARK, HIGHLY ENDANGERED BECAUSE IT'S SO MUCH IN DEMAND AS A COUGH REMEDY. RICHARD RAISED THE SEEDLINGS AND NOW MR. CELE IS GROWING SIX TREES. THE TASTE COMES AFTER. THE TASTE COMES AFTER. ANYTHING ELSE COME AFTER? YOU SURE THIS ISN'T THE OTHER ONE, THE LAXATIVE? NO, NOT AT ALL. BUT ONCE... THEN YOU'LL REALIZE WHY IT'S USEFUL FOR YOUR CHEST BY THE TASTE THAT YOU... ARE THERE ANY SIDE EFFECTS? I SHOULD HAVE ASKED BEFORE. Simmons: NONE AT ALL. IT JUST CLEARS UP THE SINUSES. IT HAS A REALLY HOT FLAVOR. I'M REALLY GETTING THE HOT FLAVOR NOW. YEAH, IT TAKES A FEW SECONDS. Alda: MR. CELE IS GROWING ONE OTHER ENDANGERED TREE SPECIES AND SEVERAL ENDANGERED PLANTS. HE'LL TAKE A LITTLE PRESSURE OFF THE FEW REMAINING WILD SPECIMENS. RICHARD SIMMONS' NURSERY IS NOW TRYING TO SPREAD THE WORD. THEY INVITE IN GROUPS OF HEALERS AND OFFER THEM YOUNG PLANTS TO TAKE HOME TO CULTIVATE. ALTHOUGH WILD PLANTS ARE TRADITIONALLY PREFERRED IT'S BEGINNING TO WORK BECAUSE THE HEALERS KNOW BETTER THAN ANYBODY WHAT'S GETTING SCARCE. Alda: MANY BOTANISTS BELIEVE WILD STOCKS WON'T BE TRULY SECURE UNTIL FARMERS BEGIN TO GROW MEDICINAL PLANTS. BUT THAT'S THE NEXT STEP. ( thunder rolling )

				Wisdom of Li Shizhen China’s ancient systems of medical diagnosis and treatment are still widespread. Drug companies are now analyzing traditional herbal remedies.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ( man speaking Chinese ) Translator: THAT'S RELATED TO THE HEART? ( speaking Chinese ) YES. Alda: WENG WEILIANG IS A PROFESSOR OF CHINESE MEDICINE. HE'S GOING THROUGH THE TRADITIONAL DIAGNOSIS: TONGUE, THEN PULSE... NOT JUST ONE PULSE, BUT SIX PER WRIST. IN CHINESE MEDICINE WHEN WE FEEL THE PULSE WE CALL IT XIN, GAN AND SHEN. IT REFERS TO DIFFERENT ORGANS. SO THIS FINGER IS THE HEART AND THIS IS THE LIVER AND THIS IS THE KIDNEY. YOU FEEL DIFFERENT THINGS IN EACH FINGER? YES. ( speaking Chinese ) Alda: DR. WENG NOW QUESTIONS THE PATIENT. IT SEEMS THAT HIS YIN AND YANG ARE BADLY OUT OF BALANCE AND HIS CHI IS SERIOUSLY AFFECTED. THESE EMOTIONAL CAUSES CAN CAUSE THE... MM... DISORDER OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE CHI INSIDE THE BODY. THE CHI? YEAH, THE CHI. IF THEY GET ANGRY THEN THE CHI IS BLOCKED. THE CHI IS WHAT? Alda: THE FOREST PROVIDES CHINESE MEDICINE'S REMEDIES TO TREAT THOSE DISEASE CONCEPTS THAT WE IN THE WEST FIND SO HARD TO GRASP. IT'S A UNIQUE, COMPLETE SYSTEM. THIS IS A KIND OF A TRADITIONAL HERBAL TEA USED FOR THE-- TO TREAT INTERNAL HEAT YOU KNOW, CAUSED BY A BAD METABOLISM. Alda: THIS EXPEDITION IS SYSTEMATICALLY COLLECTING USEFUL PLANTS, BASED ON LOCAL TRADITIONS. CHINESE MEDICINE IS A CLASSIC EMPIRICAL SCIENCE-- IF IT WORKS, USE IT. THERE'S A CURE FOR EVERYTHING. Xia: IN CHINESE MEDICINE IT'S CALLED A PURPLE SPEEL. SO ITS FUNCTION IS STOP BLEEDING. Alda: THIS TREE TREATS SKIN INFECTIONS. HERBAL REMEDIES TACKLE SIMPLE PROBLEMS AND COMPLEX, EVEN IMMUNE- OR NERVOUS-SYSTEM DISORDERS. IN CHINESE MEDICINE, THIS HAVE INTERESTING NAME CALLED "GO FOR BRAIN. " Alda: FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, MOST HERBAL REMEDIES HAVE BEEN DRAWN FROM THE TROPICAL FORESTS AND MOUNTAINS OF SOUTHERN CHINA AND NOW THESE REMOTE AREAS ARE BEING DEVELOPED. THE RESERVOIR OF PLANTS AND KNOWLEDGE IS DISAPPEARING TO THE ALARM OF SCIENTISTS. Xia: WE HAVE JUST ONE WORLD SO EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE THE IDEA ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE FOR US AND FOR THE FUTURE OF ALL OF US. SO LET US CROSS THE FINGER. Alda: THIS IS THE PHARMACY OF DR. WENG'S HOSPITAL. IT CONTAINS THE 500 MOST COMMONLY USED HERBS. LI SHIZEN'S CLASSIC HERBAL ENCYCLOPEDIA WRITTEN IN THE 16th CENTURY AND STILL THE KEY REFERENCE LISTS ABOUT 2,000 HERBS. DR. WENG'S PATIENT HAS FOUR PROBLEMS: DEFICIENT CHI, BLOOD STAGNATION, LOW APPETITE AND WEAK KIDNEY. THE KIDNEY IS ONE OF THE FIVE CRITICAL YIN ORGANS THAT COOL BODY HEAT. WHAT'S IN THIS THAT SHE'S PUTTING IN THE DISH? HUANG QI. IS THERE AN ENGLISH WORD FOR THAT THAT YOU KNOW? UH, NO. OH. WHAT IS THIS? DAN SHEN. DAN SHEN? Alda: 12 DIFFERENT HERBS ARE IN THE PRESCRIPTION THAT COMES INTO THE EXTRACTION ROOM. HERE IT WILL BE MADE INTO TEA ALONGSIDE HUNDREDS OF OTHER INDIVIDUALIZED PRESCRIPTIONS FOR THE REST OF THE PATIENTS IN THE HOSPITAL. IT'S A SYSTEM IN USE IN THOUSANDS OF HOSPITALS AND PHARMACIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND IT'S SOMETHING THAT MOST CHINESE HAVE FAITH IN. SO, DOES IT WORK? IT'S HARD TO SAY. BECAUSE LITTLE, IF ANY, ANALYSIS HAS BEEN DONE USING WESTERN-STYLE SCIENTIFIC METHODS. BUT IT'S A QUESTION WHICH PROFESSOR XIAO HOPES TO ANSWER. HE RUNS THE MAIN INSTITUTE THAT COLLECTS MEDICINAL HERBS AND HE'S SEEING AN EXPLOSION OF INTEREST. RECENTLY HE CONCLUDED AN AGREEMENT TO SEND 3,000 DIFFERENT SAMPLES TO A BIG EUROPEAN PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY FOR TESTING. THEY'LL SHARE ROYALTIES FROM ANY NEW DRUGS. SEVERAL OTHER COMPANIES ARE EXPLORING THIS ANCIENT TREASURE HOUSE OF FOLK MEDICINE. THERE'S SOME OPTIMISM THAT MAJOR PROBLEMS LIKE CANCER, AIDS AND HEART DISEASE CAN BE AFFECTED. THE CHINESE ARE ALSO INTERESTED IN EXPLOITING THEIR MEDICAL HERITAGE THEMSELVES. ONE NEW DRUG THEY'RE TESTING IS EXTRACTED FROM A PLANT TRADITIONALLY PRESCRIBED FOR DIZZINESS. SO ONE TEST TO APPLY IS THIS-- A FEW WEEKS AGO, THESE MICE LEARNED TO SWIM A MAZE. HERE THEY'RE BEING RETESTED AND TIMED OVER THE SAME COURSE. IT'S A STANDARD TEST OF MEMORY USED WIDELY IN THE WEST. THIS SUBJECT ISN'T DOING SO WELL. EVENTUALLY IT RUNS OVER THE TWO-MINUTE TIME LIMIT. BUT MICE FED AN EXTRACT OF THE TRADITIONAL DIZZINESS PLANT PERFORMED SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER. THERE'S HOPE THE PLANT COULD FORM THE BASIS FOR AN ANTI-AGING DRUG. THIS KIND OF PROCESS, DEVELOPING DRUGS FOR USE WITHIN CHINA HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR SOME TIME NOW. Xiao: FROM 1980 TILL NOW 300 NEW DRUGS WERE ORIGINATED FROM NATURAL PRODUCTS. NOW, OF THOSE 300 HOW MANY CAME FROM TRADITIONAL MEDICINE PLANTS AND HOW MANY CAME FROM PLANTS THAT YOU JUST WENT OUT AND FOUND RANDOMLY? SO, I DARE TO SAY, ALMOST 90%-- AND THAT MEANS MOST OF THESE-- ORIGINATED FROM OUR TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE. TRADITIONAL MEDICINE. Alda: A WESTERN-STYLE COMPUTER SYSTEM IS BEING USED BY DR. WENG TO STANDARDIZE TRADITIONAL TONGUE COLOR MEASUREMENTS. IT'S SEEMS THERE'S SOMETHING OF A TWO-WAY STREET DEVELOPING HERE BETWEEN EASTERN AND WESTERN MEDICINE. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW? ( translates into Chinese ) HE FEELS MUCH BETTER. WHEN DO YOU THINK YOU'LL BE FINISHED WITH THE TREATMENT? HE HOPES IN ANOTHER TEN DAYS. ANOTHER TEN DAYS? IS THAT WHAT THE DOCTOR THINKS, TOO? DOES THE DOCTOR THINK THAT? THE DOCTOR DOESN'T AGREE. OH, HE DOESN'T AGREE? NO, HE DOESN'T AGREE. HE THINKS LONGER? HE SAID, "I SHOULD LISTEN TO THE DOCTOR. " DOES THE DOCTOR WANT HIM TO STAY LONGER? THE DOCTOR WANTS HIM TO STAY LONGER BECAUSE THE DOCTOR WANTS HIM TO STOP SMOKING. AH! NOW, DOES THE DOCTOR FEEL THAT THERE'S ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SMOKING AND THE HEART PROBLEM? YES. DO YOU THINK IF HE DOESN'T STOP SMOKING THAT HE'LL BE BACK HERE WITH THE SAME PROBLEM? YES. ( laughing ) Alda: FINALLY IT WAS MY TURN. DO YOU EAT A LOT? MM? DO YOU EAT A LOT? DO I EAT A LOT? YEAH. Alda: DR. WENG'S QUESTIONS WERE UNCOMFORTABLY PERCEPTIVE. HOW CAN HE TELL THAT I EAT A LOT BY FEELING MY WRIST? THAT'S WHAT I DON'T GET. IT'S NOT AN ESPECIALLY FAT WRIST. Translator: HEADACHE? HEADACHES? SOMETIMES I GET HEADACHES. DO YOU FEEL DIZZINESS? DO YOU FEEL DIZZINESS SOMETIMES? I FELT DIZZY TODAY IN THE OTHER ROOM. Alda: HE SOON TOLD ME MY BODY HAD TOO MUCH HEAT. I TOLD HIM I EAT A LOT OF SPICY FOOD AND HE AGREED THAT CAN CAUSE HEAT. BUT MY HEAT AND COLD WERE SIGNIFICANTLY OUT OF BALANCE. AH, YOU CAN SEE THAT YELLOWISH COATING ON THE TONGUE ESPECIALLY AT THE ROOT OF THE TONGUE. WHAT'S THAT? THAT'S BAD OR GOOD? THAT'S HEAT. Alda: HEAT, HEAT. Translator: AND IF YOU DON'T TREAT IT IT CAN CAUSE LIKE HEADACHE OR DIZZINESS OR MAYBE HYPERTENSION. REALLY? YOU WOULD SAY A THING LIKE THIS TO A PERSON? Alda: GINSENG AND CHICKEN SOUP WERE PRESCRIBED. WELL, THEY DIDN'T HAVE THE SOUP BUT PROFESSOR XIAO DID HAVE SOME AMERICAN GINSENG. YOU PREFER THE AMERICAN GINSENG? THE AMERICAN GINSENG BECAUSE BY OUR TRADITIONAL... THE THEORY OF OUR TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE AMERICAN GINSENG, THE PROPERTY IS MILD. Alda: AMERICAN GINSENG IS SUPPOSED TO BE COOLING TO BALANCE MY EXCESSIVE INTERNAL HEAT. ON THE OTHER HAND IF KOREAN GINSENG... Alda: I WASN'T USED TO THE TASTE AND I WASN'T SURE WHAT IT WOULD DO TO ME. VERY REFRESHING. Alda: AND NOW I HAD THIS NEW PROBLEM OF INTERNAL HEAT. I'M HEADING INTO THE BACK STREETS OF OLD BEIJING

				Water, Water Everywhere Frontiers challenges one dowser to a scientifically controlled trial, while two others direct a search for water -- but all three come up empty-handed.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: PAUL SEVIGNY IS DOWSING FOR WATER IN THE VERMONT MOUNTAINS. HE SAYS HIS MIND CAN DIRECTLY SENSE THE WATER HUNDREDS OF FEET BELOW. Sevigny: I'M CONCENTRATING ON OVER 25 GALLONS A MINUTE GOOD DRINKING WATER. I BUILD ALL OF THIS STUFF INTO MY LITTLE NOGGIN SO THAT, UH... I GET EXACTLY WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR. COMING UP ON SOMETHING. HERE WE ARE. Alda: HE MENTALLY ASKS THE DOWSING ROD ABOUT THE WATER'S DEPTH. 342 FEET DEEP. Alda: NEXT HE FINDS THE FLOW RATE A WELL COULD TAP INTO HERE. IT'S 26 GALLONS PER MINUTE. COMING UP ON SOMETHING. Alda: A NEARBY SKI RESORT HAS ASKED PAUL WHERE TO DRILL A NEW WELL. THERE WE ARE. 44 GALLONS A MINUTE HERE. 161 FEET. SO THIS IS A BETTER YIELD... YEAH. AND, UH... NOT AS DEEP. Alda: WE'LL CALL THAT LAST ONE SITE ONE. THEN A LITTLE FURTHER UP, SITE TWO. Sevigny: OKAY, GOT SOMETHING HERE. Alda: SITE TWO IS DEEP-- NEARLY 500 FEET-- BUT A GOOD FLOW RATE. 48 GALLONS A MINUTE. WOW! Alda: WITH TWO PROMISING WELL SITES IN HAND NEXT DAY KEN BANNISTER, WHO WORKS WITH PAUL CONTINUES THE PROCESS. KEN USES CONVENTIONAL INSTRUMENTS. THIS ONE MEASURES THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD. SMALL VARIATIONS CAN MEAN THERE ARE FRACTURES IN THE BEDROCK WHICH IS WHERE WATER MIGHT BE. SITE ONE HAS JUST SUCH A MAGNETIC FEATURE AND KEN'S NOT SURPRISED. Bannister: FOR SEVERAL YEARS I DID APPLIED GEOPHYSICS SUCH AS THIS. A LOT OF TIMES MY CLIENTS WOULD SAY "IT'S VERY INTERESTING THAT YOU PICKED THIS SITE. MY DOWSER ALSO PICKED THE SAME SITE. " AND THAT HAPPENED WAY TOO MANY TIMES TO BE CONSIDERED COINCIDENCE, AS FAR AS I WAS CONCERNED SO ON ONE OF THOSE JOBS I ACTUALLY ASKED THE DOWSER IF I COULD TRY IT MYSELF AND WHEN I CROSSED OVER THE FEATURES THAT I HAD ALREADY FOUND, THE DOWSING ROD WENT DOWN AND I BECAME A BELIEVER AT THAT POINT. Alda: FINALLY KEN PINPOINTS THE SPOT AT SITE ONE WHERE THEY'LL DRILL THIS SUMMER. ONLY DOWSING CAN BE THIS EXACT, HE SAYS. THIS WOULD BE THE LOCATION WHERE WE WOULD DRILL THE WELL, RIGHT HERE. Alda: WE'LL CHECK BACK WITH KEN'S WELL LATER, BUT FIRST MEET JAY TODD. HE'S TESTING THIS SITE IN EUGENE, OREGON, VERY CAREFULLY BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO PUT JAY THROUGH A TEST TO SEE IF HE CAN FIND A METAL TARGET HIDDEN UNDER ONE OF TEN CONTAINERS. JAY, WHO HAS BEEN DOWSING FOR WATER, OIL OR LOST OBJECTS FOR 20 YEARS IS HAPPY TO DEMONSTRATE HIS ABILITIES. YOU PICKED SOMETHING UP OVER THERE, DIDN'T YOU? I PICKED UP WATER OVER THERE. SO NOW, THAT'S NOT GOING TO INTERFERE WITH WHAT YOU'RE DOING HERE? WELL, I DON'T THINK SO. GEE, WHIZ-- YOU GOT ANY SMALLER? Alda: THIS IS RAY HYMAN. I DON'T NEED ANYTHING THAT BIG. Alda: HE'S THE PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR WHO READ DIANNA'S PALM. Alda: IS THAT GOING TO GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR WORK IF IT'S THAT SIZE? I DON'T KNOW, BUT IT DON'T HAVE TO BE THAT BIG. Alda: JAY NEEDS AN OBJECT LIKE THE HIDDEN TARGET TO SERVE AS WHAT HE CALLS A RECEIVER. HE ACCEPTS THE LARGE RECEIVER AND STARTS THE FIRST TRIAL. IT LOOKS CASUAL BUT ACTUALLY WE'RE USING A RIGOROUS TEST PROCEDURE. HERE'S HOW IT WORKS. OFF TO THE SIDE, A RANDOM NUMBER IS GENERATED ELECTRONICALLY. THAT'S THE NUMBER OF THE CONTAINER UNDER WHICH THE TARGET IS TO BE HIDDEN. TO PLACE THE TARGET, BARRY BEYERSTEIN A NEUROSCIENTIST FRIEND OF RAY HYMAN'S GOES THROUGH AN ELABORATE ROUTINE OF FAKE PLACEMENTS SO THE DOWSER CAN'T GET ANY HINTS FROM FLATTENED GRASS OR SHIFTED CONTAINERS. WE EVEN FILMED THIS DEMONSTRATION AFTERWARDS SO WE COULDN'T UNCONSCIOUSLY GIVE HINTS DURING THE TEST. THIS IS A FORM OF DOUBLE-BLIND TESTING THAT'S ESSENTIAL IF THE RESULTS ARE TO BE TRUSTED. HE'S BLIND BY VIRTUE OF THE WAY WE'VE SET THIS UP AND THEN ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE AROUND HIM WHILE HE'S BEING TESTED ARE BLIND, TOO. Alda: HERE WE ARE BACK AT THE FIRST TRIAL. JAY GETS A POSSIBLE RESPONSE... THAT'S NUMBER NINE. Alda: THEN HE CONTINUES DOWN THE LINE. Todd: GETTING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THERE. Alda: THEN THERE'S ANOTHER RESPONSE AT NUMBER TEN. WELL, IT'S JUST A GUESS, I THINK BUT THAT'S THE ONE I'M PICKING. IT'S PROBABLY NOT IT. ( comments indistinctly ) WELL, I'M PRETTY SURE IT ISN'T. NO. Todd: TRY, UH... TRY... WHICH ONE WAS THE OTHER ONE I WAS HAVING? Alda: NINE, YOU SAID. Todd: NINE? TRY NINE, BUT I DOUBT IT. NO. HOW ABOUT A DIFFERENT RECEIVER? HOW ABOUT LEAD? Alda: SO NOW BARRY PLACES A LEAD WEIGHT DURING HIS HIDING PROCEDURE WHILE THE REST OF US WAIT AT A DISTANCE. ARE YOU HOLDING IT REAL LOOSE? YEAH. Alda: JAY TAKES THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE IF I HAVE THE POWER TO DOWSE. Todd: ALL RIGHT, TRY IT IN YOUR OTHER HAND. SAME WAY, SAME WAY. YOU'RE NOT IN THE CENTER. ALL RIGHT, NOW HOLD IT REAL LOOSE. I'M GETTING IT REALLY LOOSE. HOT DOG, HOT DOG! HOT DOG, I GOT HIM, YOU CAN DO IT! I CAN DO IT? Alda: AND GUESS WHAT? WHEN I CROSSED THAT AQUIFER THAT JAY FOUND EARLIER I COULD FIND THAT, TOO. Todd: IF THEY CROSSED, DID THEY CROSS? THEY CROSSED AND SMACKED ME IN THE CHEST. OKAY, THAT'S WHERE THE AQUIFER'S AT-- RIGHT WHERE I WENT. Alda: LEARNING FROM OTHERS LIKE THIS IS HOW DOWSERS GET STARTED. Alda: THEY'RE CROSSING AGAIN. Todd: YEAH, THAT'S THE AQUIFER. I THINK... WHEN I KNOW WHERE IT'S SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN MY HANDS LET IT HAPPEN. Todd: WELL, TO A CERTAIN DEGREE, YOU'RE CORRECT. YOU ARE. YOUR MIND PLAYS A ROLE IN IT. NOW, OVER A MALE HAND THAT'S GOING TO GO BACK AND FORTH. Alda: HERE'S A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION OF THE ROLE RAY HYMAN THINKS THE MIND PLAYS. THERE IT IS. YEAH, AND I'M NOT TRYING TO DO THIS AT ALL. IF WE CAN GET A FEMALE HAND UNDER HERE IT WOULD GO IN A CIRCLE. Alda: LET ME TRY THIS WITH SARA. OKAY. THERE IT GOES, OKAY. LOOKIT-- RIGHT INTO A CIRCLE. THAT'S AMAZING. I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING. I'M NOT TRYING TO MAKE IT... I'M TRYING TO HOLD IT STILL! Hyman: IF I TOLD YOU THE REVERSE IT WOULD DO THE REVERSE, BY THE WAY. TELL ME THE REVERSE. OKAY, LET'S NOW ASSUME THAT THIS IS A MALE HAND EVEN THOUGH IT'S A FEMALE HAND. IT'LL GO BACK AND FORTH-- HERE IT GOES. ( laughing ) OKAY, NOW... LEST ANYBODY THINK THAT THIS IS REAL MAGIC WHY IS IT WORKING? WITHOUT REALIZING IT, WE ARE MAKING THIS MOVE TO FIT WHAT WE EXPECT IT TO DO. AND WE'RE NOT AWARE OF THIS, BECAUSE WE'RE FOCUSING ON THIS AND AS A RESULT WE-- UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS-- CAN BELIEVE THAT SOME OUTSIDE FORCE IS DOING THIS. RIGHT. Alda: AFTER YEARS OF STUDYING DOWSERS RAY HYMAN HAS CONCLUDED THAT THE DOWSING ROD REACTS TO NOTHING MORE THAN OUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS. BUT DOWSERS HAVE A RESPONSE TO THAT. Hyman: ALMOST ALL DOWSERS AGREE WITH MY EXPLANATION. THEY AGREE THAT THE MIND IS UNCONSCIOUSLY DOING IT BUT THEN THEY SAY THAT THE UNCONSCIOUS, THOUGH HAS SOME CONNECTION TO THE ETHEREAL WORLD, OR WHATEVER. I THINK IT'S AN E. S.P. EXPERIENCE AND THE ANSWER'S COMING FROM UP HERE AND THESE ARE JUST INDICATORS. MOST OF THE DOWSERS NOW BELIEVE THAT IT'S COMING FROM YOUR MIND THROUGH YOUR MUSCLES, AND CAUSING INVOLUNTARY ACTION. Alda: TO SAY DOWSING IS E. S.P. IS TRULY BEYOND SCIENCE-- SCIENCE HAS NO WAY TO TEST SUCH A BELIEF DIRECTLY. BUT WHAT'S NOT BEYOND SCIENCE IS WHAT WE'RE DOING HERE-- A CONTROLLED TEST TO SEE IF A DOWSER GETS RESULTS. ( chuckles ) I JUST DON'T HAVE A LONG ENOUGH ATTENUATION BUT I WON'T GIVE UP TRYING UNTIL I FIND ONE. Alda: WE'RE ON THE SECOND TRIAL, LOOKING FOR THE LEAD WEIGHT. I HAVE TO GO WITH THIS ONE. NO. Todd: I DIDN'T FIGURE. I GOT TO GET LONGER ATTENUATION SOMEHOW. Alan: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? I GOT TO GET A LONGER ANTENNA-- GET THE RIGHT LENGTH. IT MIGHT EVEN TAKE A SHORTER ONE. ALL I KNOW TO DO IS TO JUST GO THROUGH IT SEE IF I GET ANY KIND OF RESPONSE. Alda: FOR TRIAL THREE, JAY CHANGES DOWSING RODS. BUT THAT DOESN'T HELP. Todd: I DON'T GET ANY RESPONSES AT ALL. YOU KNOW, IF YOU GET GOOD AT THIS YOU COULD OPEN UP A PLUMBING SUPPLY STORE WITH JUST STUFF YOU DIG UP FROM THE GROUND. WELL, I CAN FIND PIPE UNDER THE GROUND. YOU CAN FIND PIPE? WHY CAN'T YOU FIND THESE... BECAUSE I'M FOLLOWING IT. WELL, WHAT... SO WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? I'M FOLLOWING... THE MOTION, BASICALLY. OF WHAT'S GOING THROUGH THE PIPE? BASICALLY, YEAH. OH, I SEE. AND THIS THING AIN'T MOVING. YEAH, YEAH. Alda: TRIAL FOUR IS TO BE THE LAST. FOR JAY, HE COULDN'T COME UP WITH THE ROD WITH THE CORRECT RESPONSE. I'M NOT GETTING ANY RESPONSE AT ALL. I'M REALLY NOT. I'M SORRY, RAY. Alda: WE'RE BACK IN VERMONT, AND THERE'S BEEN A HITCH. THE PREFERRED DRILL SITE WHICH WAS SUPPORTED BY MAGNETIC MEASUREMENTS AND DOWSING HAS BEEN RULED OUT BECAUSE IT'S CLOSE TO CONSERVATION LAND. SO WE'RE AT SITE TWO. BUT BECAUSE THERE ARE NEARBY POWER LINES WHICH DISRUPT MAGNETIC MEASUREMENTS ONLY DOWSING HAS IDENTIFIED THIS SITE. NEVERTHELESS, KEN IS CONFIDENT THEY HAVE A GOOD SITE TO DRILL ACCURATELY LOCATED WITH DOWSING. Bannister: THE BEST SPOT IS RIGHT HERE. THERE'S NO QUESTION THERE'S A DOWSING REACTION AT THIS LOCATION. THE FELLOW THAT WORKS FOR SUGARBUSH WHO'S ALSO A PART-TIME DOWSER CAME UP AND HE PICKED THE SAME SITE AS WELL SO YOU'VE GOT THREE DOWSERS ALL PICKING THE SAME SPOT. Alda: DRILLING STARTS FIRST THING NEXT MORNING. GRINDING THROUGH VERMONT GRANITE IS A TEDIOUS PROCESS WATCHED NERVOUSLY BY LIZ WALKER FROM THE SKI AREA WHICH IS PAYING THE BILL. BUT IN THESE MOUNTAINS, THEY'RE SURE TO HIT WATER SOMEWHERE SAYS DAVE PARKER, THE DRILLER. PROBABLY 99% OF THE TIME YOU'RE GOING TO HIT WATER NO MATTER WHERE YOU DRILL. IT'S JUST A QUESTION OF HOW DEEP YOU GOT TO GO TO GET IT. Alda: SURE ENOUGH, AT 370 FEET THERE'S A TRICKLE-- ABOUT A GALLON A MINUTE. THE DOWSERS HAVE PROMISED 48 GALLONS A MINUTE AT 465 FEET. BUT BY 500, IT'S STILL ONLY A TRICKLE. LIZ CALLS UP KEN. Liz: IF YOU SAY IT'S WORTHWHILE TO GO DEEPER WE'LL GO OUT AND GET SOME MORE STICKS AND GO DEEPER. Alda: THEY KEEP DRILLING, AND KEN JOINS LIZ AT THE SITE. KIND OF DISAPPOINTING. YEAH, I KNOW. I WAS DISAPPOINTED OVER 100 FEET AGO-- 200 FEET AGO. Alda: AT 600 FEET, THEY CALL IT OFF CONFIRMING WHAT DAVE THINKS OF DOWSING. PERSONALLY MYSELF, I DON'T HAVE MUCH BELIEF IN IT. I'VE PROVED THEM WRONG TOO MANY TIMES, YOU KNOW. I'VE ALWAYS LEARNED THAT WHENEVER THERE'S A FAILURE IT'S NOT THAT THE DOWSING DIDN'T WORK IT'S THAT YOU DIDN'T DO A GOOD JOB AT IT OR SOMETIMES THE ACTUAL HOLE WILL MISS SLIGHTLY AND YOU JUST DON'T HIT THE FRACTURE. Alda: WHILE OUR TWO EXAMPLES DON'T DISPROVE ALL OF DOWSING LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF SCIENTIFICALLY CONTROLLED STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT DOWSING CAN'T FIND THINGS. Alda: AT A SECRET MILITARY INSTALLATION SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA TWO AIR-FORCE PATHOLOGISTS EXAMINE THE BODY OF AN ALIEN BEING.

				Aliens Have Landed Some believe a spaceship landed in Roswell, New Mexico, but Frontiers finds a much simpler explanation -- balloons used to spy on the Russian atomic tests.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: A FEW WEEKS AGO THE ALIENS' SPACECRAFT CRASH- LANDED IN THE NEW MEXICO DESERT WHERE IT WAS DISCOVERED BY A LOCAL RANCHER. ALL WRECKAGE AND ALIEN REMAINS WERE QUICKLY IMPOUNDED. ALL DETAILS ARE NOW CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET. AN AIR FORCE CAMERAMAN HAS BEEN CALLED IN TO DOCUMENT THE AUTOPSY OF ONE OF THE ALIENS. IT'S AN EVENT OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE-- THE FIRST EVIDENCE OF A VISIT TO EARTH OF BEINGS FROM ANOTHER WORLD. THE ALIEN IS CLEARLY ADVANCED: IT NO LONGER NEEDS LARGE TEETH TO EAT. THE SIZE OF THE SKULL INDICATES A HIGHLY DEVELOPED BRAIN AND THE EYES APPEAR TO BE PROTECTED FROM SPACE RAYS BY SPECIAL CONTACT LENSES. IT IS 1947. TO AVOID PUBLIC PANIC THE GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSES ALL WORD OF THIS HISTORIC EVENT BUT SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN FRONTIERS MANAGED TO ACQUIRE A COPY OF THE FILM. WELL, ALL RIGHT, DISREGARD EVERYTHING I JUST SAID. ACTUALLY, WE FAKED THE WHOLE THING IN A HOLLYWOOD SPECIAL-EFFECTS HOUSE RUN BY STEVE JOHNSON WHO PLAYED THE OTHER PATHOLOGIST IN THE AUTOPSY. THANKS. IT'S GOOD TO GET OUT OF THAT. YOU'RE TELLING ME. WE'VE GOT A FEW NEW WRINKLES ON OUR FACES. Alda: THIS IS THE ALIEN AUTOPSY FILM THAT WE WERE MIMICKING. FIRST SHOWN ON TV IN THE EARLY '90s IT WAS ACCOMPANIED BY THE SAME KIND OF CLAIMS WE JUST MADE FOR OUR ALIEN. TO SPECIAL EFFECTS PEOPLE LIKE STEVE IT'S AN OBVIOUS HOAX, AND NOT A VERY GOOD ONE. IT LOOKS MORE LIKE A TAILOR'S DUMMY WITH NO APPARENT STRUCTURE LIKE A SKELETON TO HOLD IT UP. SOMEHOW THE CAMERAMAN NEVER MANAGES TO GET THE CLOSE-UPS IN FOCUS. AND WHENEVER THERE'S ANY INTERESTING ACTION-- LIKE OPENING THE SKULL-- A CONVENIENT SHOULDER OBSCURES THE VIEW. THE BIGGEST THING THAT MADE THE OTHER ONE FALSE IS THAT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE OF WEIGHT TO IT. IF YOU REMEMBER, THEY'RE KIND OF PRETENDING TO LOOK IN THE MOUTH. THEY JUST DO THIS KIND OF THING. THEY KIND OF PRETEND TO EXAMINE THE HEAD AS OPPOSED TO DOING WHAT WE'VE DONE HERE-- REALLY BEING ABLE TO SEE WEIGHT AND MASS. THAT'S ONE THING THAT REALLY MAKES THIS MUCH MORE BELIEVABLE BECAUSE YOU CAN PICK IT UP. YOU CAN REALLY SEE HOW A BODY WOULD REACT. Alda: THE ALIEN AUTOPSY FILM FANNED THE FLAMES OF ALIEN FEVER THAT MILLIONS OF AMERICANS HAVE CAUGHT. ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO, IS THE FOCUS. Man: T-SHIRTS-- $10 EACH, TWO FOR $15, THREE FOR $20. Alda: IN 1947, A RANCHER NEAR HERE FOUND WHAT WAS SAID TO BE FLYING SAUCER WRECKAGE. 50 YEARS LATER, ROSWELL TOURISTS ARE STILL THINKING ABOUT IT. SOMETHING HAPPENED, WE DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. THE OBJECT WAS UNIDENTIFIED, AND SO IT HAS TO BE SOMETHING. IF NOTHING HAPPENED THEY WOULDN'T HAVE ALL THIS STUFF. Alda: ALIENS ARE GOOD BUSINESS FOR A SMALL TOWN BUT THEY'RE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. Woman: WHEN IT CRACKED OPEN, IT WAS STILL BASICALLY INTACT BUT IT KIND OF SPLIT OPEN AT A SEAM AND KIND OF HAD AN OPENING TO IT LIKE THIS SO YOU COULD PEER INSIDE. THERE WERE THREE BODIES STILL INSIDE THE CRAFT A FOURTH KIND OF HANGING HALF IN AND HALF OUT OF THE OPENING IN THE CRAFT AND THEN THE FIFTH BODY HAD EITHER BEEN THROWN OUT OR HAD CRAWLED OUT. Alda: WE THINK WE HAVE A BETTER ACCOUNT OF WHAT HAPPENED IN ROSWELL IN 1947. LET US EXPLAIN. Newsreel announcer: THE SKY IS THE STAGE, THE ACTORS FLYING SAUCERS AND THEY'RE BACK ON THE SCENE WITH SOME NEW TWISTS. Alda: IN THE '40s AND '50s, SAUCER SCARES WERE ALL THE RAGE. A PILOT ON THE WEST COAST SEEMS TO HAVE STARTED IT ALL WHEN HE SAW SOME STRANGE LIGHTS. IT WAS JUNE 1947. AT THAT TIME, A TEAM FROM NEW YORK UNIVERSITY WAS AT WORK IN ALAMAGORDO, NEW MEXICO. THEY WERE DEVELOPING WAYS TO LIFT MICROPHONES UP INTO THE STRATOSPHERE HOPING TO PICK UP THE FIRST SOVIET A-BOMB TESTS. STANDARD WEATHER BALLOONS WERE USED TO FLY THE MICROPHONES ALONG WITH RADIO TRANSMITTERS, BATTERY PACKS AND THINGS LOOKING LIKE FOIL-COVERED KITES TO ACT AS REFLECTORS FOR TRACKING RADAR. THE FIRST BALLOON FLIGHT OF 1947 WAS LAUNCHED FROM ALAMAGORDO ON JUNE 4. IT DRIFTED NORTHEAST TRACKED BY GROUND RADAR AND BY A B-17 TO MONITOR RADIO SIGNALS. ABOUT 70 MILES DOWNWIND-- JUST 15 MILES FROM THE FOSTER RANCH AND BEYOND RADAR RANGE-- THE BATTERIES FAILED PREMATURELY. WITH NO SIGNALS TO MONITOR, THE B-17 TURNED BACK. IT WAS THE ONLY BALLOON THE PROJECT LOST, BEFORE OR SINCE. TEN DAYS LATER A MAN ON THE FOSTER RANCH FOUND SOME MYSTERIOUS WRECKAGE AND PUSHED IT UNDER A BUSH. THEN CAME THE WEST COAST FLYING SAUCER SCARE. THE RANCHER WONDERED IF HE'D FOUND A CRASHED SAUCER SO HE TOLD THE SHERIFF, WHO CALLED THE LOCAL AIR BASE-- ROSWELL ARMY AIR FIELD. THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER, CONVINCED THEY HAD A SAUCER GAVE THE LOCAL PRESS THIS DRAMATIC STORY. THE WRECKAGE WAS FLOWN TO 8th ARMY AIR FORCE HEADQUARTERS AT FORT WORTH WHERE THESE PICTURES WERE TAKEN. THIS IS THE ROSWELL INTELLIGENCE OFFICER. AT FORT WORTH, GENERAL RAMEY BROUGHT IN HIS METEOROLOGIST WHO IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZED THE MATERIALS AS PARTS OF A WEATHER BALLOON AND A RADAR REFLECTOR. HE'D USED BOTH IN WORLD WAR II. SO THE GENERAL ISSUED ANOTHER PRESS RELEASE SAYING THERE WAS NO SAUCER, AND THAT WAS THAT... AT LEAST UNTIL THE 1970s, WHEN A SERIES OF POPULAR BOOKS REOPENED THE WHOLE ROSWELL AFFAIR THIS TIME ALLEGING AN ELABORATE GOVERNMENT COVER-UP OF THE TRUTH. SO WE TRACKED DOWN ONE OF THE SCIENTISTS FROM THE ORIGINAL BALLOON PROJECT, CHARLIE MOORE. HERE HE IS WORKING AT ALAMAGORDO IN 1947 WHEN HE WAS A GRADUATE STUDENT. CHARLIE, NOW A RETIRED METEOROLOGY PROFESSOR HAS PICTURES SHOWING THE BALLOONS AND RADAR REFLECTORS THEY WERE USING THAT YEAR. THEY WERE STILL USING SIMILAR EQUIPMENT IN 1953 WHICH IS WHEN THIS REFLECTOR DATES FROM. IT PRETTY WELL MATCHES WHAT THE RANCHER SAID HE FOUND. THE LOCAL PAPER REPORTED THE RANCHER AS SAYING Rancher ( dramatized ): THE TINFOIL, PAPER, TAPE AND STICKS MADE A BUNDLE ABOUT THREE FEET LONG. THERE WERE SOME EYELETS IN THE PAPER. THE RANCHER WHO PICKED UP THE DEBRIS NOTED THAT IT CONTAINED BRASS EYELETS AT THE CORNERS OF THESE RADAR TARGETS. THEY WERE ALSO ON THE TARGETS WE FLEW. Rancher ( dramatized ): CONSIDERABLE SCOTCH TAPE AND SOME TAPE WITH FLOWERS PRINTED UPON IT HAD BEEN USED IN THE CONSTRUCTION. THE TAPE HAD SOME FLOWERLIKE DESIGNS-- IT LOOKED LIKE LITTLE POPPIES AND LITTLE ROSE PETALS IMPRINTED ON THE BACK. THE TAPE WAS ALONG THESE BALSA WOOD STICKS TO REINFORCE THE ATTACHMENT OF THE PANELS TO THE BALSA WOOD. THAT TURNED OUT TO BE AN EMERGENCY FIX THAT THE PROTOTYPE TARGETS WE HAD HAD TO HAVE AND THE MANUFACTURER HAPPENED TO HAVE SOME TAPE ON HAND AND PUT THESE REINFORCEMENTS ON IT. Alda: THE TAPE DESIGNS ARE NOW INTERPRETED AS ALIEN HIEROGLYPHS. YOU CAN EVEN BUY THIS "AUTHENTIC REPLICA" IN ROSWELL. THE RANCHER SAID HE HAD NOT FOUND A WEATHER BALLOON ONLY RUBBER THAT WAS... Rancher ( dramatized ): SMOKY GRAY IN COLOR. Alda: HERE'S THE MATERIAL PHOTOGRAPHED AT FORT WORTH BUT CHARLIE MOORE HAS A SIMPLE EXPLANATION. THIS IS A NEOPRENE BALLOON SIMILAR TO THE ONES WE USED IN 1947 AND THEY'RE QUITE SENSITIVE TO LIGHT. THE MATERIAL SITTING ON THE GROUND... THE FRAGMENTS CAN TURN QUITE BLACK. HERE IS SOME NEOPRENE BALLOON MATERIAL THAT I'VE EXPOSED TO THE SUNLIGHT FOR TWO OR THREE WEEKS. Alda: IN FACT, THE BALLOON PROJECT EXPLANATION MAKES SENSE NOW AS IT DID IN 1947. BUT MANY PEOPLE JUST WON'T BUY IT. WE NEED THE GOVERNMENT TO RELEASE THE DOCUMENTS AND WE'LL FIND OUT YES OR NO REAL QUICK. Alda: IT'S SAID THAT THE FLYING SAUCER WRECKAGE AND THE ALIENS WERE QUICKLY CONCEALED IN THIS HANGAR AT ROSWELL ARMY AIR FIELD THEN FLOWN OUT TO WRIGHT- PATTERSON AIR BASE IN OHIO. A MASSIVE COVER-UP WAS PUT IN PLACE WITH CHARLIE MOORE AND HIS BALLOONS AS THE OFFICIAL STORY. PHILIP KLASS IS AN ENGINEER AND AEROSPACE JOURNALIST WHO HAS WORKED TO DEBUNK U. F.O. REPORTS FOR 30 YEARS. HE'S FOUND THAT IN SECRET INTELLIGENCE PAPERS FROM THE TIME-- NOW DECLASSIFIED-- NOBODY HAD EVER HEARD OF FLYING SAUCER WRECKAGE. FOR EXAMPLE, HERE'S A REPORT FROM 1948-- THE YEAR AFTER ROSWELL-- BY THE HEAD OF INTELLIGENCE AT WRIGHT-PATTERSON. HE SAYS WE'VE ANALYZED 180 U. F.O. SIGHTING REPORTS OR INCIDENTS AND HE SAYS SOME OF THEM ARE WEATHER BALLOONS SOME TURN OUT TO BE BRIGHT PLANETS OR STARS BUT THERE'S STILL OTHERS THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO IDENTIFY. NOW, HE SAYS, "ALTHOUGH IT IS OBVIOUS "THAT SOME TYPES OF FLYING OBJECTS HAVE BEEN SIGHTED "THE EXACT NATURE OF THOSE OBJECTS CANNOT BE ESTABLISHED "UNTIL PHYSICAL EVIDENCE SUCH AS THAT WHICH WOULD RESULT FROM A CRASH HAS BEEN OBTAINED. " THIS DOCUMENT I HAVE PERSONALLY OFFERED TO A NUMBER OF TV SHOW PRODUCERS IT HAS BEEN AVAILABLE TO THE AUTHORS OF ROSWELL BOOKS-- NEVER USED, NEVER MENTIONED, NEVER CITED. THIS ONE DOCUMENT ALONE, IF IT WERE NOT FOR ALL THE OTHERS WOULD PROVE THAT THERE WAS NO CRASH SAUCER AT ROSWELL. THIS IS JUST AS HARD TO DO AS IT WOULD BE IN REALITY. Alda: IN SCIENCE THERE'S A USEFUL DOCTRINE CALLED OCCAM'S RAZOR. IT SAYS THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION IS PROBABLY THE RIGHT ONE. THAT MEANS THE ONLY ALIENS AROUND COME FROM HOLLYWOOD. NOW, THE BONE DIDN'T SEEM TO HAVE ANY MARROW IN IT BUT THAT WOULD ONLY BE... GETTING PICKY, ARE YOU? YEAH, WELL... I'M BEGINNING TO BELIEVE THAT THIS IS NOT A REAL ALIEN. WHAT MADE YOU MAKE THE TEETH LIKE THIS? WELL, WE WANTED TO HAVE SOME DEGREE OF INTEREST INSIDE THE MOUTH SO WE MADE TEETH THAT WERE VESTIGIAL. SO THESE PEOPLE HAVE EVOLVED TO THE POINT WHERE THEY DRINK THEIR MEALS OUT OF A CAN OR THEY TAKE A PILL ONCE A MONTH. THIS IS A BORING LIFE. NO WONDER THEY'RE OUT EXPLORING OTHER PLANETS. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LIVE FOR IN THEIR OWN. Alda: WE'RE ON WEST BRAKER LANE, OUTSIDE AUSTIN, TEXAS.

				New Energy Age Zero Point Energy could supply the globe’s energy needs forever, if it exists. Groups of enthusiasts are searching for it very carefully.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: IT'S AUSTIN'S HI-TECH HIGHWAY LINED WITH A LOT OF SMALL OUTFITS WITH BIG IDEAS. AND THIS PLACE MAY HAVE THE BIGGEST IDEA OF ALL-- FREE, UNLIMITED ENERGY FOR ALL THE WORLD. OUT BACK IS ONE OF THE FIRST MACHINES THEY'VE BEEN TESTING. WHAT IS THIS THING? THIS IS A SUPPOSED FREE-ENERGY DEVICE THAT WAS DEVELOPED IN MOLDAVIA. YEAH? YEAH-- ONE OF THE FORMER SOVIET STATES. IT WAS WIDELY RUMORED AROUND THE WORLD THAT THIS THING PRODUCED ABOUT THREE TIMES MORE HEAT ENERGY THAN THE MECHANICAL ENERGY REQUIRED TO PUMP THE WATER THROUGH IT. THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE KIND OF THING YOU CAN'T GET A PATENT FOR. EXACTLY. IT'S NOT GOING TO BLOW UP, IS IT? IT'S NOT GOING TO BLOW UP, NO. WE ONLY HOPE. YOU WISH IT WOULD. YEAH, I REALLY DO. Man: WE WOULD WELCOME THAT. Alda: WATER IS PUMPED INTO A CIRCULAR SWIRL CHAMBER WHICH FORMS THOUSANDS OF TINY BUBBLES. AS THE BUBBLES COLLAPSE ON THE WAY OUT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO TAP INTO WHAT'S CALLED ZERO-POINT ENERGY. ZERO-POINT ENERGY IS SAID TO BE ALL AROUND US. ANY SMALL ENCLOSED SPACE LIKE A BUBBLE IS SUPPOSED TO CREATE AN IMBALANCE IN THIS ENERGY SEA WITH MORE ENERGY OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE THAN INSIDE. WHEN THE BUBBLE COLLAPSES, THE ENERGY IS RELEASED. YOU HAVE TO BE A PHYSICIST TO GET WHY ALL THIS COULD BE TRUE BUT RIGHT NOW THERE ARE MAYBE 40 GROUPS AROUND THE WORLD EXPLORING THE IDEA. IN AUSTIN THEY TESTED THE MOLDAVIAN DEVICE THOROUGHLY AND YES, IT DID HEAT UP THE WATER BUT NO MORE THAN YOU'D EXPECT FROM THE ENERGY IT TOOK TO RUN THE PUMP. AND THAT ENERGY CAME FROM THE LOCAL ELECTRIC COMPANY. BUT MAYBE THEY HAD SIMPLY FAILED TO RECREATE THE ORIGINAL CONDITIONS OF THE DISCOVERY. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE EXACTLY REPRODUCING THOSE CONDITIONS? IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT IS SUCH A COMMON PROBLEM THAT I'VE EVEN COINED A TERM FOR IT: THE EXPERIMENTER'S LAMENT. Alda: THEY TRIED EVERY COMBINATION OF CONDITIONS THEY COULD THINK OF TO NO AVAIL. RELUCTANTLY THEY CONCLUDED THE MOLDAVIAN DEVICE IS A DUD. BUT THEY HAVEN'T GIVEN UP ON BUBBLES. ACTUALLY, THERE ARE LITTLE BUBBLES IN MY EARS NOW. IF YOU PUT YOUR FINGER UNDER THE... OH, NO... YOU PUT YOUR FINGER UNDER IT. IT DOESN'T HURT BUT IT MAKES YOUR FINGER WARM... YES, IT DOES-- REALLY, REALLY WARM. NOW, WATCH WHAT IT DOES TO THE WATER. Alda: THE ULTRASOUND GENERATOR CREATES A HUGE NUMBER OF BUBBLES. THE HEAT GIVEN OFF WILL BE ACCURATELY MEASURED TO SEE IF THERE'S ANY EXTRA FROM ZERO-POINT ENERGY. HAL PUTHOFF'S ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THE ENERGY'S OUT THERE. Puthoff: EVEN IN FAR OUT EMPTY SPACE THERE'S ENOUGH ENERGY IN THE VOLUME OF A COFFEE CUP TO, FOR EXAMPLE, EVAPORATE ALL THE WORLD'S OCEANS. THIS IS THE PART I DON'T UNDERSTAND. YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING EXISTING IN A VACUUM. YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT OUT IN SPACE WHERE THERE ARE NO PARTICLES. THAT MEANS IT'S A VACUUM, RIGHT? WHAT THERE ARE ARE PHOTONS. YOU KNOW, IF YOU'RE OUT IN A SPACESHIP AND YOU ARE IN VACUUM YOU CAN STILL LOOK AND SEE THE SUN. SO WHAT YOU'RE SEEING IS THE LIGHT PROPAGATING FROM THE SUN TO YOU IN THE FORM OF PHOTONS. WELL, THE ZERO-POINT ENERGY IS A JUST A PHOTON SEA. IT'S SORT OF LIKE A NOISE BACKGROUND. Alda: IT SOUNDS KIND OF FANTASTIC BUT SCOTT AND HAL SEEM LIKE CAREFUL SCIENTISTS. I ASKED ONE OF OUR TOP PHYSICISTS, STEVEN WEINBERG WHAT HE THOUGHT. WHAT ABOUT ZERO-POINT ENERGY? DOES IT EXIST? IS IT WORTH SPENDING OUR TIME TRYING TO EXPLOIT ZERO-POINT ENERGY IF IT DOES EXIST? I THINK THE ANSWERS TO THOSE QUESTIONS ARE "YES" AND "NO. " ( laughing ) UH... THERE'S NO DOUBT THERE IS SUCH A THING AS ZERO-POINT ENERGY AND IT TURNS OUT TO BE INCREDIBLY SMALL. WE MEASURE IT BECAUSE ENERGY PRODUCES GRAVITY-- THAT'S WHAT GENERAL RELATIVITY TEACHES US THAT ALL ENERGY CAN SERVE AS A SOURCE OF GRAVITATION AND IF THERE WAS A LOT OF ENERGY IN EMPTY SPACE THERE'S A LOT OF EMPTY SPACE IN THE UNIVERSE IT WOULD CREATE VERY STRONG GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS WHICH WOULD COMPLETELY CHANGE THE WAY THE UNIVERSE IS EVOLVING AND WE WOULD KNOW THAT. AND BASED ON THAT SORT OF ARGUMENT YOU COULD SAY THAT IN A VOLUME OF SPACE THE SIZE OF THE EARTH THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY IS LESS THAN MAYBE A GALLON OF GASOLINE. DID YOU GIVE YOUR MOTHER THIS CLOCK? Alda: OTHER PHYSICISTS DON'T AGREE WITH WEINBERG'S ESTIMATE FOR ZERO-POINT ENERGY. BUT IN THEIR SEARCH FOR IT SCOTT AND HAL DON'T INTEND TO FOOL THEMSELVES. TO SHOW HOW TRICKY THAT IS SCOTT TOOK ME TO SEE HIS MOTHER'S CLOCK. I BROUGHT A VISITOR. I'D LIKE YOU... BETTY LOU, MEET ALAN ALDA. HOW DO YOU DO? NICE TO MEET YOU. COME IN. GOT YOUR CREW WITH YOU? Alan: WE BROUGHT AMERICA WITH US, ACTUALLY IF THAT'S OKAY. Alda: BETTY LOU'S CLOCK ILLUSTRATES HOW TOUGH IT CAN BE TO GET AT THE TRUTH. THE CLOCK, MYSTERIOUSLY, RUNS FOREVER. IN FACT, THE BIG DOME SHAPE INSIDE SLOWLY EXPANDS AND CONTRACTS WITH THE WEATHER LIKE A BAROMETER, WINDING THE SPRING. IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT, YOU COULD BE IN TROUBLE. Little: I COULD TELL YOU THAT THERE WAS ZERO-POINT ENERGY TRANSDUCER IN THIS HOUSING BACK HERE AND YOU MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO BELIEVE ME. PEOPLE CAN FOOL ONE ANOTHER FRAUDULENTLY LIKE THIS AND I GUESS THEY CAN FOOL THEMSELVES, TOO IF THEY DON'T REALLY KNOW HOW IT'S WORKING. YOU CAN EITHER JUST SIMPLY MAKE A MISTAKE AND THINK IT'S REAL OR YOU CAN SUBCONSCIOUSLY DELUDE YOURSELF AND PARTICULARLY IF YOU WANT TERRIBLY BAD FOR IT TO BE REAL THEN YOU CAN... THE DELUSION IS MUCH EASIER THEN. Alda: SCOTT AND HAL MAY NOT BE BEYOND SCIENCE-- ALTHOUGH THEY ARE ON THE FRINGES-- AND THEY'RE DETERMINED TO AVOID MISTAKES OR DELUSIONS. TAKE A LOOK AT THIS RIG THEY'RE BUILDING. IT'S DESIGNED TO MAKE VERY ACCURATE MEASUREMENTS OF HEAT IN A TEST CELL INSIDE. TEMPERATURES ARE MEASURED USING TWO INDEPENDENT METHODS BUT A COUPLE OF DAYS BEFORE WE ARRIVED THE TWO MEASUREMENTS STARTED TO DIVERGE WITH ONLY A DUMMY TEST CELL IN PLACE. THE RED LINE SHOULD BE DOWN BY THE BLUE ONE BUT INSTEAD IT'S INDICATING AN INCREASED TEMPERATURE. IF THIS WERE TRUE, WHAT WOULD THAT MEAN? WELL, THAT WOULD MEAN THAT THE DEVICE IN THERE WAS MAKING ENERGY OUT OF SOME UNKNOWN SOURCE. THAT WOULD CALL FOR A PARTY. YES. SO BEFORE YOU CALL THE CATERER, WHAT DO YOU DO? ASSUME IT'S AN ERROR. ATTACK WITH EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT AND TRY TO TEAR IT DOWN. IF IT RESISTS AND STAYS THEN YOU CAN BEGIN TO BECOME EXCITED AND MAYBE YOU'VE DISCOVERED SOMETHING NEW. Alda: WILL SCOTT AND HAL DISCOVER SOMETHING NEW? ACCORDING TO HAL, WE WON'T HAVE LONG TO WAIT BEFORE WE FIND OUT. YOU MUST HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT HOW MUCH IT WOULD CHANGE THE LIFE OF EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET. WE PROBABLY WILL CALL THE 20th CENTURY THE NUCLEAR AGE IN TERMS OF NEW ENERGY DEVELOPMENTS AND FOR THE CHAUVINISTS IN THE FIELD LIKE OURSELVES WE THINK THE 21st CENTURY COULD BE THE ZERO-POINT ENERGY AGE. Alda: BARRY BEYERSTEIN THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO HELPED RUN OUR DOWSING TEST IS AN EXPERT ON GRAPHOLOGY-- HANDWRITING ANALYSIS.

				Paper Personality Graphologists say your handwriting reveals who you are, but scientific studies have never been able to back up the claim.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: WHEN GRAPHOLOGISTS LOOK AT MY HANDWRITING WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR? THEY BELIEVE THAT YOUR PERSONALITY IS ENCODED IN THINGS LIKE SLANT, FOR INSTANCE. SO HERE WE HAVE AN EXAMPLE OF HANDWRITING THAT SLANTS PREDOMINANTLY TO THE LEFT. HERE WE HAVE WRITING THAT SLANTS... OKAY, IF IT'S SLANTING TO THE LEFT WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO TELL US? OKAY, THEY USE METAPHORS. SO, SAY, WHAT DOES THIS REMIND ME OF? WELL, A SLANT TO THE LEFT IS A STANDOFFISH PERSON. THIS IS SOMEBODY WHO SLANTS AWAY FROM PEOPLE AND NOTICE, HERE'S A HANDWRITING ANALYST'S DESCRIPTION-- "PEOPLE WHOSE WRITING SLOPES TO THE LEFT MAY BE UNWILLING TO GO OUT AND FIGHT THE WORLD. " THEY'RE HOLDING BACK. HOLDING BACK. Alda: THIS IS ONE OF THE LARGER GRAPHOLOGY COMPANIES CALLED DATAGRAPH. THERE ARE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF GRAPHOLOGISTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. WITHOUT KNOWING IT, YOU MAY HAVE HAD YOUR WRITING ANALYZED WHEN YOU APPLIED FOR A JOB OR A LOAN. JACK DONOVAN, DATAGRAPH'S PRESIDENT IS PROUD OF THEIR METHODS WHICH INVOLVE CAREFUL MEASUREMENT OF HUNDREDS OF FEATURES LIKE SIZE, ROUNDNESS, WORD SPACING, LETTER SPACING STRAIGHTNESS OF LINES, AND SO ON. HE SAYS THEIR RESULTS ARE FAR SUPERIOR TO THOSE OF OTHER GRAPHOLOGISTS. Donovan: THEY NORMALLY USE 150 TO 200 HANDWRITING FEATURES, WHERE WE USE 420 PLUS. SO JUST MATHEMATICALLY WE'D BE... HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF BEING MORE ACCURATE. WE SAY THAT WE'RE ACCURATE TO 90%. Alda: DATAGRAPH DOES MEASURE ACCURATELY BUT THE MEASUREMENTS ARE STILL INTERPRETED IN THE TRADITIONAL WAY-- LIKE BEGETS LIKE. TAKE HEIGHT OF LETTERS, FOR EXAMPLE. Alda: THE 420 MEASUREMENTS ARE COMBINED INTO A PERSONALITY PROFILE GIVING THE SUBJECT'S SCORES ON 14 CHARACTERISTICS FROM SELF-ESTEEM TO SALES POTENTIAL. Donovan: HANDWRITING ANALYSIS USING OUR MEASUREMENT SYSTEM, WE CALL THAT A MINDPRINT. YOU'RE IT, AND THE ODDS-ON CHANCES OF SOMEBODY ELSE BEING LIKE YOU IS ONE IN SIX TRILLION. Alda: I HAD MY MINDPRINT DONE. THE COMPANY ASKS YOU TO WRITE ABOUT THREE SPECIFIC TOPICS-- HOBBIES, GREATEST SUCCESS AND GREATEST CHALLENGE. "... I MET THE CHALLENGE THROUGH TEAMWORK "AND WITH OTHER ESCAPEES AND BY CALLING ON POWERS I DIDN'T KNOW I POSSESSED... " "...I FREQUENTLY SEE MYSELF IN MY MIND'S EYE HITTING A LONG HIGH ONE OVER THE FENCE. " WE SENT IN SAMPLES FROM EIGHT PEOPLE, ALL ANONYMOUS. THIS ONE'S MINE. I'M HAVING MY SLANT MEASURED RIGHT NOW. Man: THE FURTHER RIGHT THAT IT GOES THE MORE IMPULSIVE AND THIS PERSON IS IMPULSIVE, VERY IMPULSIVE. Alda: I GUESS MY LINES AREN'T TOO STRAIGHT, EITHER. Man: THERE IS SOME CONFUSION IN THIS PERSON'S LIFE. LACK OF ORGANIZATION. Alda: HERE ARE THE EIGHT FINISHED ANALYSES. NOW BARRY BEYERSTEIN AND I ARE GOING TO SEE IF WE CAN RECOGNIZE OURSELVES. ALL RIGHT, THIS IS NOT ME. "INDEPENDENT, SELF-RELIANT, HAS GOOD JUDGMENT... " OH, THAT WAS MINE. GIVE ME THAT. BUT I DON'T THINK THAT'S ME. I HAVE TO SAY, NOTHING HERE LEAPS OFF THE PAGE AS BEING ME. I DON'T FIND MYSELF SAYING, "WOW, THEY REALLY GOT ME. " NAILED ME, YEAH. Alda: IN FACT, WE COULDN'T PICK OUT OUR OWN PROFILES SO AFTER BEING TOLD WHICH ONE WAS MINE I COUNTED UP HOW OFTEN IT WAS RIGHT. "STRONG LIKES AND DISLIKES. " THAT'S RIGHT, THAT'S RIGHT. "IMPULSIVE, EASILY OFFENDED, HATES BITTERLY. EMOTIONAL BRUSH FIRE. " OH, SURE, WHY NOT? LET'S SAY I'M IMPULSIVE. MAYBE I AM, MAYBE I'M NOT. "SELF-ESTEEM IS HIGH. " ABSOLUTELY, THEY GOT THAT RIGHT. "VERBAL DISCRETION IS HIGH, THE ABILITY TO KEEP CONFIDENCES. " I WON'T TELL YOU WHETHER THAT'S TRUE OR NOT. "VITALITY IS AVERAGE. " NO, I HAVE A LOT OF VITALITY, SO THAT'S WRONG. Alda: ALTOGETHER I THOUGHT FOUR WERE RIGHT AND EIGHT WRONG WITH TWO MAYBES. I WAS TRYING TO BE SCIENTIFIC ABOUT MY ASSESSMENT ALTHOUGH THAT WAS HARD. Alda: YOU CAN BE INFLUENCED BY WANTING THIS TO BE TRUE. IF YOU WANT IT TO BE TRUE, YOU'LL SAY "YEAH... THOSE TIMES WHEN I AM STANDOFFISH, THOSE DOMINATE. " BUT YOU HAVE TO COUNT UP THE TIMES YOU'RE STANDOFFISH AND NOT STANDOFFISH TO REALLY KNOW. THIS IS WHY WE EVOLVED THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: TO KEEP TRACK OF ALL THE INSTANCES SO YOU HAVE THE COMPLETE SET OF DATA TO LOOK AT AND TO DO WHAT YOU JUST DID, TALLY IT UP AND COUNT AT THE END AND DON'T RELY ON FAULTY INFERENCES, ON EXTRAPOLATIONS ON FAULTY MEMORY TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU THINK IS IN THERE. Alda: TESTING GRAPHOLOGY SCIENTIFICALLY IS THE AIM OF JOHN NEZLEK A PSYCHOLOGIST AT WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE. THE IDEA IS TO COMPARE GRAPHOLOGY WITH A STANDARD PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST. THERE ARE 187 QUESTIONS. THERE ARE THREE CHOICES FOR EACH QUESTION. Alda: 40 STUDENTS ARE TAKING PART IN THE STUDY. THIS TEST RATES SUBJECTS ON A SERIES OF SCALES FROM HUMBLE TO ASSERTIVE, FOR EXAMPLE OR TRUSTING TO SUSPICIOUS. Woman: "I CAN FIND ENOUGH ENERGY TO FACE MY DIFFICULTIES. " "A"-- ALWAYS. "I FEEL A BIT NERVOUS OF WILD ANIMALS EVEN WHEN THEY ARE IN STRONG CAGES. " Man: "I HAVE BEEN LET DOWN BY MY FRIENDS. " "B"-- OCCASIONALLY. "I HAVE SOME CHARACTERISTICS IN WHICH I FEEL DEFINITELY SUPERIOR TO MOST PEOPLE. " "A"-- YES. Alda: PERSONALITY IS A SLIPPERY THING AND PSYCHOLOGISTS REGARD THESE TESTS AS ONLY MODERATELY RELIABLE UNLIKE THE CLAIMS MADE BY DATAGRAPH. Man: "IN MY SPARE TIME, I LIKE TO PLAY MUSIC. " Alda: ALL THE SUBJECTS SUBMITTED WRITING SAMPLES AS WELL. Woman: "... A BALANCE THAT ALLOWS ME "TO EXPLORE MY ACADEMIC INTERESTS AND AMBITIONS BUT THAT ALSO ALLOWS ME FREEDOM TO PLAY. " Alda: THE STUDY SHOWED SOME INTRIGUING MATCHES BETWEEN GRAPHOLOGY AND THE STANDARD TEST BUT THE NUMBER OF SUBJECTS WAS SO SMALL THIS COULD HAVE BEEN COINCIDENCE. IT'S TO AVOID THIS PROBLEM THAT STANDARD TESTS ARE DEVELOPED WITH THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. TO VALIDATE DATAGRAPH'S CLAIMS WILL TAKE A SERIES OF STUDIES NOT JUST ONE SUCH AS THIS SO AT THIS TIME IT'S NOT APPROPRIATE TO SAY WHETHER IT CONFIRMS OR DISCONFIRMS DATAGRAPH'S CLAIMS SO MUCH AS IT DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION TO DO EITHER. Alda: THERE IS, HOWEVER, A BASIC FLAW IN THE PROCEDURE YOU SEE HERE. GRAPHOLOGISTS CLAIM THE CONTENT OF THE WRITING SAMPLE IS IRRELEVANT. BUT IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO RULE OUT ALL INFLUENCE ON THE ANALYST CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS. I LAID A FEW LITTLE TRAPS FOR THEM IN THE WAY I ANSWERED. SO I ANSWERED LITERALLY TRUE BUT I USED WORDS THAT HAVE CONVENTIONAL EXPECTATIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ATTACHED TO THEM THAT IF THEY WERE LOOKING AT THE CONTENT WOULD LEAD THEM TO CONCLUSIONS THAT ARE TOTALLY WRONG FOR ME. Alda: BARRY WROTE: Beyerstein ( reading ): "GREATEST CHALLENGE: "GETTING OVER A SERIOUS MEDICAL CONDITION. "MY ABIDING FAITH CARRIED ME THROUGH A VERY TOUGH TIME WITH THIS ILLNESS. " Alda: IN FACT, IT WAS A CLOSE RELATIVE WHO WAS SICK BUT GETTING OVER IT WAS A CHALLENGE FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY. NEVERTHELESS THE ANALYSIS CAME BACK: Alda: IT WAS ONE MORE INDICATION OF THE PROBLEMS WITH GRAPHOLOGY. THERE HAVE BEEN WELL OVER 200 STUDIES NOW, DONE BY EXPERTS IN THE FIELD OF PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT, PERSONNEL WORK, AND SO ON-- WHERE GRAPHOLOGISTS HAVE PARTICIPATED KNOWINGLY WILLINGLY, CLAIMING THAT THEY WERE SURE THEY COULD DELIVER THE GOODS AND THEY'VE FALLEN FLAT ON THEIR FACES. I MEAN, THE BOTTOM LINE WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE WHOLE GAMUT OF RESEARCH IS THAT THIS IS LIKE TEA LEAF READING. THIS IS LIKE PALM READING. THIS IS LIKE ASTROLOGY. IT'S A PSEUDOSCIENCE, IT HAS NO SCIENTIFIC CREDIBILITY. Alda: