Snake oil at the RTÉ

Prominent religious, sports and popular psychology writer and ex-RTÉ producer, Colm Keane (here he is at a book signing), appeared on Tubridy a couple of weeks ago, selling his new book tapping into the religious bereaved market, Going Home: Irish Stories from the Edge of Death. RTÉ are apparently so proud of the interview that the piece appeared on Playback for the week that was in it and can still be heard as a podcast to be downloaded from RTÉ's website.

The Tubridy Show Podcast Page

I apologise for the delay in posting this blog on said interview (it happened on 20 January), but I should say I did post a few lines on the day itself on the subject on Ireland's premier politics chatboard, politics.ie. However, the thread I started on the subject was understandably locked by the site owner at the behest of Mr. Keane, who issued the most blood-curdling threats of libel action if it was left up. Accordingly, I decided myself to have a little chat with some legal advisors. The present post has been given the all clear by said advisors and omits nothing that was said in my original posts to politics.ie.

Not personal

I should make clear that my reasons for posting this here have nothing to do with any personal animus against Mr Keane. I know the man only by his work (his soccer book, Ireland's Soccer Top 20, for example, is both useful and entertaining: his exclusions from the top 20 are pleasingly controversial). My reasons are twofold: that the interview very neatly illustrates a large number of the peculiar habits of broadcasting rampant in the station that prevent it from providing a public service to the Irish viewer and listener; and because the juxtaposition of the two parts of the interview were simply breathtaking in their irresponsibility and unprofessionalism (but more of the latter issue later).

The first of my reasons for objecting is the willingness of the station to treat with chamois leather any old snake oil that has a religious hue to it, as long as its sheen is respectable (i.e. is not what Ireland's standard religions regard as 'cultish'). In my view, the habit is partially the result of a strong religious lobby within the station and partially due to RTÉ's view that its task of providing space and respect for the 'voices' of Ireland (and not to offend such 'voices', no matter how sensitive) trumps their responsibility to provide wide-ranging and balanced information on matters of controversy. It is not unconnected also to their absurd implicit (and occasionally explicitly expressed) view that if they're getting roughly the same amount of stick from all sides, they're getting it about right (forgetting the old adage about empty barrels and decibels).

Thus, while such international luminaries as Prof. Richard Dawkins are automatically roasted over the airwaves (most recently by Marion Finnucane and Ryan Tubridy), independently produced hagiographies of Pio are bought and broadcast, programmes are made in-house in praise the founder of Opus Dei (by their news and current affairs people, no less) and obvious snake oil merchants (especially those who still have good contacts amongst senior RTÉ staff) with nothing new to sell are given free publicity.

Now the particular variety of snake oil this book is dealing with (near death experiences as evidence for an afterlife) was briefly in vogue amongst conservative publishers such as Reader's Digest in the 1970's, but went out of fashion by the end of that decade in the developed world. Keane adds nothing new to the subject, except perhaps to give an Irish angle to this dead, dead, dead topic.

And yet his book, not even newly published (it came out during the middle of last year), is given a large and very friendly slot on national radio at a time of high listenership and is repeated at the weekend. The airing of the subject on a public service channel is utterly inexplicable from any professional point of view.

Supernormal coincidences

Anyone who doubts my opinion on the low and unoriginal quality of Keane's religious wares is respectfully referred to his previous effort: Padre Pio: The Irish Connection. The blurb on the back cover will give you a taste of it: "... this remarkable collection if stories is crammed full of miracles and cures attributed to Padre Pio's intercession. There are accounts of scientifically inexplicable recoveries from cancer, heart disears and brain damage, along with revivals from blood clots, strokes, multiple sclerosis and life-threatening viral infections. Also featured are visions, apparitions and supernormal coincidences."

Is he or isn't he?

Keane tantalisingly suggests he's not a catholic on this particular promotional appearance, no doubt to keep up with his changing market. At the very start of the interview, he declares himself to have been a skeptic when he started. And later, he speaks approvingly of people who actually stopped attending religious services on having a near death experience. Tellingly, Tubridy makes no comment on his authorship of the Pio book, which would have automatically rubbished any claim of the interviewee to skepticism in the face of the supernatural.

Indeed it's soft soap for his book all the way. Atheists are mentioned as possible objectors to Keane's ideas on the subject and not further mentioned. It is admitted that alternative scientific explanations exist and such theories are left undiscussed. Nothing searching or critical or even probing is suggested or asked.

Now the percentage of religious broadcasting as a proportion of general output on RTÉ is down near the European average. I'm reminded of this every time I send a complaint to RTÉ about their excess of religious broadcasting. But of course, the Keane interview does not count as religious broadcasting. Any public service broadcaster in Europe, in the unlikely event they were willing to broadcast such material, would have consigned it to their religious programming. Not at RTÉ. At the national broadcaster, like at Ireland's national schools, religion is not confined to religion class; rather, it permeates the whole school day.

Friends

Of course it's not all about RTÉ's penchant for promoting religion, in Colm Keane's as in many other cases, historical associations with RTÉ probably have quite a lot to do with it. Keane is an old friend of RTÉ's. He was a producer and broadcaster there for many years. And this is another of RTÉ's anti-public service vices. I believe this is the main reason the interview was arranged. Tubridy knows Keane personally and says so on air. Much is also made of the school both Tubridy and his late son (more of him later) shared (it was Blackrock College -- which, incidentally, is also where I went to school, much earlier). Nobody seems ashamed to admit that the man is getting a hearing because he's a pal. Whether this is a comment about attitudes in RTÉ or in Ireland is a moot point.

The shock

But the most shocking aspect of the interview (almost 30 minutes long in total) were that more than two thirds of it did not discuss the book at all. The last 20 minutes of the piece discussed in very emotive terms the tragic death two years ago of Keane's young son of cancer.

Of course, in itself, a story picked at random of the death of a loved one can produce good, bracing and informative radio, and even if there was nothing particularly notable about the death amongst thousands of other similar tragic deaths of young (or indeed old) people without celebrity status, there may be a professional justification for broadcasting such a story. This is especially so where the storyteller is someone as articulate and radio-literate as Keane. But there is no such justification in this case.

The first point against this particular 19 minutes is that there is already too much of this sort of emotive broadcasting on RTÉ. Indeed invitations to emote seem to form as much part of the ethic of public service broadcasting on RTÉ as religion, and seem to trump any requirement for mature debate on the political issues always lurking in the background of such situations. RTÉ should be trying to reduce such broadcasting moments, no matter how much it provides occasions for tearful empathy for its listeners: its responsibility to inform is often compromised by the hysteria such stories produce (just as the BBC's ability to inform its public was compromised by the broadcast emotional breakdown that followed the death of Diana in 1997).

The second reason for objecting to the second part of the interview is more dissonant, more unpleasant (indeed it is probably the reason that Keane wanted to sue politics.ie for hosting my first remarks on the interview), and it is more damning.

It is an occasional practice in broadcasting to tell such tragic stories as that of Keane's late son in juxtaposition with some charitable appeal in aid of some cause connected with the death being discussed. But in this case the cause being promoted was simply the sales of a book whose subject had only a very tenuous link to the tragic story. The book, as far as I know, is not being sold for charity.

To spell it out, on cynical me (and on a few less cynical people I know) the overall impression given by the half hour interview was roughly the following: "À propos of nothing: buy our pal's book. Go on do, ah shure don't you know his son died fairly recently. Please."

Naive

The best you can say about Keane allowing himself to become involved in this embarrassing stuff is that it was unbelievably naive. (He's a long-time broadcaster and ex-head of communications at NUI Maynooth.) Whatever about that, RTÉ's use of the material in this tasteless manner was quite literally unforgivable for the total lack of public service broadcasting values it displayed.

The fact that RTÉ is apparently still proud of this ugly piece of radio is just astonishing.

Catholic Schools and segregation

David Quinn is at it again. His article in last Friday's Indo attempts to defend catholic schools against the "slur" that they promote segregation. The coverage of the issue of denominational education is "hysterical" he claims, implying that they accused the Catholic Church of promoting "educational apartheid". The atmosphere he said had been so poisoned as to conjure up visions of "Balbriggan Burning"(a clever reference to the film, Mississippi Burning, you understand).

The article was entirely the product of his imagination. None, absolutely none, of what he says has any factual back-up. The tone in which he said the media dealt with the matter is entirely undetectable.

I had a look at the serious media commenting on the Department of Education audit of enrolment policies and found two pieces on it in the 'serious' media prior to Quinn's piece. First up is a very restrained and professional report by Emma O'Kelly on Friday last's news programmes on RTÉ, in which she reported the findings of the audit, accurately mentioning one VEC that was taking on a disproportionate share of immigrant children, as compared to the secondary schools in its catchment area. No mention of educational apartheid appeared anywhere, nor was there any mention of the catholic church. There was, however, in the background an unspoken suggestion that the problem of integration of immigrant children was being made more difficult by the denominational nature of Irish education (remember the Troubles in Northern Ireland?). Possibly to avoid giving offense to people like Quinn, even this obvious point was not explicitly mentioned.

Where "apartheid" was mentioned was in the excellent Irish Times article of the same day (the link will only work if you pay your dues to Geraldine Kennedy). Sean Flynn, the IT education editor and author of the article didn't single out the catholic church either and concentrated on the obvious fact that denominational education will make the task of integration of new immigrants a lot more difficult, if not impossible. Indeed, the headline didn't seem inappropriate, but neither it nor the article under it accused the catholic church in particular of anything at all.

What he did say is that students from better-off families tend to "gravitate" to church-run schools, leaving other categories of students to be dealt with by the rest. This is manifestly true (indeed 'twas ever so, as anyone with two eyes in their head can see) and is backed up by the figures in the Dept of Ed and Sc audit of enrolment numbers.

Incidentally, the Dept's own interpretation of the audit can be found here. It differs very radically from Quinn's completely unfounded gloss on it (i.e. that catholic schools are doing "more than their fair share of immigrant children, and Traveller children, and children with 'special education needs'"). The Audit indicates nothing of the sort. What it does say (according to the Dept's interpretation and mine) is that the enrolment policies of some schools have the effect of excluding certain classes of children from those schools, so that such students have to be catered for exclusively by other schools in within the same catchment area. It is also clear that the majority of such exclusivist schools are catholic (indeed it could hardly be otherwise, catholic schools being the vast majority).

It should be remembered that we're talking only about schools that are financed almost exclusively by the public purse. No fee-paying schools (which also receive large amounts of public money) were included in the audit.

In his usual melodramatic style, Quinn demands an apology from the media for the catholic church for having "hysterically" accused the catholic church of not carrying "its burden" of immigrant children. Nobody has accused it of this. The assertion is a typical Quinnean paper tiger. But he does tell us (as usual, without evidence) that "Catholic primary schools ... are blind as to a child's social background, or educational standard." It is precisely this that the Audit is denying (with evidence). Again as usual, Quinn makes the mistake of thinking saying it makes it so. It doesn't.

Of course, what he's trying to defend against is the charge that catholic schools' behaviour amounts to 'segregation' of students. Yet he admits that:

Catholic primary schools, like other denominational schools, do give preference to children of their own faith. This is why they exist. This is why many parents want them.

What the policy implied above could mean other than segregation is very hard to imagine. It's not segregation on the basis of race (but then I haven't heard anyone accuse the church or any school management of racism), but it remains segregation (namely, segregation on the basis of religion). Basically what he's saying is that catholic schools are entirely entitled to select on the basis of religion. He may be right (though this blogger reckons that the insistence on this form of segregation all though the Troubles in Northern Ireland -- and indeed up to this day -- was a huge contribution to the continuance of those troubles).

The state, however, is entitled to dispose of public funds in such a way as to radically reduce segregation, whether of this sort or of any other. Especially when the "many parents" who want segregation are well under 50% while while at least 96% of schools provide this segregation. What Quinn is trying to prevent is precisely this sort of radical de-segregation.

His view should be exposed and his purpose should be resisted. The Archbishop of Dublin has said some encouraging things about the non and inter-denominational education but has really only provided mood music. The Irish catholic church, as owners of the vast majority of schools in the country, should be asked to make a proposal on how the current issue of religious and (de facto) racial segregation of education in Ireland should be dealt with.

The Department of Education and Science should have its own radical proposals in mind. The suggestions made in their letter to education partners on the audit would suggest that they realise something has to be done, though their proposals don't seem to go any further than appointing regional officers responsible for monitoring school enrolment policies and their results.

Given that the public purse has paid for the erection and maintenance of almost all such schools, the Department should drive a far harder bargain than the letter suggests. It should form part of the Department's strategy to correct the huge overrepresentation of denominational schools in Irish education.

One central issue to be negotiated is how ownership of the network of school buildings in Ireland can be gradually made to better reflect who actually paid for them -- i.e. the Irish people. Since the chuch is unlikely to give its bricks and mortar away, and the Dept of Ed is unlikely to have the money to buy them, your blogger fears that this could take a long time to settle.

Reville's theology is back at the Irish Times

I'm reeling. I thought that after the drubbing Prof William Reville got the last time he started introducing theology to the science page in the Irish Times he'd made a firm resolve to limit himself in future to harmlessly cutting and pasting internet articles on the nutritional benefits of bananas and non-benefits of multi-vitamin supplements.

But alas, I'm sad to announce that, as of today, Thursday 24 April 2008, the good professor has once more fallen off the wagon. The occasion of his downfall this time was the temptation to argue for protecting "the embryo back to the point of conception". Like any good addict, he makes excuses for this all-consuming need of his to engage in theological musings in inappropriate places. His own version of 'I only do it on health grounds' is that he has "biological reasons" for doing so. It doesn't take much, however, to see this as the rationalisation typical of the addicted mind that it assuredly is.

Have a look at the article (as always, on condition you pay for your IT on the web -- if not, try look over someone's shoulder on the bus, or in extremis buy a copy).

For the benefit of those who drove, cycled or walked to work, what Reville can't resist saying to us today hangs on the following thread:

...it seems to me to be wrong to arbitrarily pick any point on this continuum [of life between conception and old age] and claim that it marks the boundary between the preceding "not fully human and not deserving of protection" section and the succeeding "human enough to deserve protection" section.

The point at which human life begins, we are to understand, can only be picked at the very start of the continuum, i.e. conception. Anything else is arbitrary.

So far, so very familiar. The trouble is anyone with a bit of knowledge of the philosophical, ethical and scientific issues surrounding protection of embryos knows that it's nonsense. For a start, conception isn't a single point on a continuum -- for an egg to be fertilised is a process that takes some time.

But when should the moment of conception be defined according to the theologians? The moment when a sperm breaks into the egg (which is what most of us imagine as conception)? W ell no, that can't be it, as quite often more than one sperm manages to enter the egg cell and, through some not fully understood process, one set of chromosomes is later expelled and the other is fused into the egg's DNA over a period of half an hour or so. This fusion process itself is prone to disturbance too. So should the sublime moment be defined at exactly the time the fusion process starts or when it's complete?

While the above looks like nonsensical how-many-angels question, the point of introducing it here is to make clear that the moment at which conception is deemed to have happened is also to some extent arbitrary. For a conception-obsessed theological ethicist, the question might even be of practical relevance to the work of scientists who have reason to fiddle around with sperm and eggs at various stages of mingling. For the rest of us though, the question is nonsense. Incidentally, for most biologists, the term 'conception' is so irredeemably confusing, it is not used at all. The preferred term for the process of combination of male and female DNA in an egg is 'fertilisation'.

What is important is the observation that the moment of conception is an absurdly early point for defining the beginning of human life.

For example, my beloved (who, incidentally, is the mother of my equally beloved child) happens to share a single moment of conception with her identical twin sister (indeed the only reason I can tell them apart visually is the fortunate fact that my partner sat on her sister's ear for the whole of late pregnancy, thus giving the latter a slightly longer, narrower head). Just ask the question as to when the life of each of them began and you begin to feel the pull of the whirlwind of uncertainty (and absurdity) surrounding the standard 'at conception' view.

Besides this, it is technically possible (or will probably be soon) to create people without giving them a moment of conception. Let's consider the example of scientists (with half an eye on squaring the theological problems surrounding experimentation on zygotes) who take animal eggs, evacuate their nuclei, and replace the missing DNA with a sample from say, a skin cell from the nearest lab technician. Part of the reason for doing this would to be to deal with a shortage of fertilised human egg cells, but researchers looking at this option have half an eye on squaring the theological problems surrounding experimentation on zygotes in their efforts to check out the potential of embryonic stem cells.

After all, an animal egg cell (fertilised or not) is held by no theology to be a sacred human life, and neither is any component scraping of Lee Chang's or Siobhan Murphy (PhD)'s edidermis. But the point of the exercise is to produce something that is as near as possible identical to a fertilised ovum, to let it grow a little, and then to harvest stem cells from it. There is nothing in principle (apart from ethical principle) that would stop the ovum from being implanted and growing into a person with an uncanny resemblence to Lee or Dr. Siobhan. But this person would never have been conceived. Conception was therefore clearly not when life for this hypothetical person began. I should emphasise that there is no question of any of this actually happening amongst reputable scientists, I'm just making a point about the logic of the conception argument.

Indeed, the adult stem cells that Reville (very optimistically) claims to be an alternative to embryo stem cells are not all that different. With a bit of tinkering (which may indeed be necessary to make them useful for some sorts of stem cell research) they could become as much potential human beings as much as any ovum with the full complement of human DNA. After all, it is the very flexibility of stem cells that both makes them so interesting therapeutically and so full of potential to grow into any type of human tissue (even the full set in the correct sequence -- i.e. an adult human).

Besides, it's been known for some time that more than half (some say a lot more than half) of ova fertilised by the standard route (you know what I mean) are expelled from the potential mother's body without ever implanting. If Reville's argument based on no arbitrary lines being ethically justifiable were to be taken seriously, then medical science would have as great a responsibility to save these human individuals from death as they would an eight-year-old suffering from leukemia. After all, by an argument practically identical to Reville's, it would seem tobe wrong to arbitrarily pick any point on the continuum of life between conception and old age and claim that it marks the boundary between the preceding "let nature take its course" section and the succeeding "human enough to deserve the full protection of the best that medical science can do".

Reville should know all these arguments (and the fact that he mentions twins in his article could be interpreted to suggest that he's at least subconsciously aware of one or two of them).

In a typical bit of sophism (typical of roman catholic apologists, that is) Reville tells us:

... the biological fact is that the early embryo is "a human at his/her stage of a microscopic ball of cells". [the inexplicable quotes are his]

Biology does nothing of the sort. What it might do in this regard is tell us what we already know, i.e. that an embryo is certainly human in the same sense as Dr. Siobhan's skin cells are, but has no position on its status as a human individual. That's a job for philosophy (which Reville is evidently unqualified in).

One would have thought that a scientist of the eminence of Prof. Reville would be above mixing the noun clase "a human" with the simple (and very different adjective "human".

Unfortunately for Reville's desire for a clear point at which humans beings become human beings, such a point doesn't exist.

My own view (for what it's worth) is the following: A fertilised egg is much more than just equivalent to a skin scraping, and should therefore never be treated in a cavalier fashion. An early embryo is obviously deserving of even more respect. As the embryo develops it will accumulate features that increase its status as a being, until it reaches a stage where this status is effectively equivalent to a fully recognised human being. If an arbitrary line need be drawn (and for judicial and other reasons it may be necessary) then it should be drawn early. But, for reasons already outlined, not as absurdly early as conception.

Reville's reach for the theological bottle was by his own account occasioned by the RTE's broadcast on stem-cell research as part of the "Science Friction" series, which Reville informs us was unbalanced. Since the full program isn't available on the RTÉ site I can't make a judgement on its objectivity, but the pots and kettles principle would seem to apply to Reville in this respect. As editor of the Irish newspaper for record's weekly science section, should he not also have a duty to provide balance? Yet, not for the first time, Reville's article is severely unbalanced. It is also either surprisingly uninformed, or intentionally suppresses much relevant information available from biology ... which, as public awareness of science officer at UCC he surely has an obligation to keep us informed.


Woman priests
Also in the Irish Times today is a letter that magnificently illustrates that any unlikely change of policy of the Vatican on the question of woman priests would not necessarily lead to an improved attitude amongst the clergy to 'the laity' (or vice versa). Elisabeth Roddy wants woman priests, amongst other things, to "galvanise those members of the laity who think it is enough to sit like suet puddings, waiting for the clergy to pour spiritual custard over them".

I wonder which members of the laity she means. Perhaps those who, having profited from long experience, would run a mile at even a sniff of spiritual custard. Or perhaps she means those that couldn't be bothered about the catholic church, even to the extent of making it clear that they are no longer part of it. There's a lot of that about.