More Amazing Claims By Pseudoscience-Proponent Jaime Licauco

The movie Lucy which is currently showing in theaters is bothering the Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist and pseudoscience-mouthpiece Jaime Licauco. In an article titled "Full Brain Potential", Licauco voiced his discontent with movies like Lucy. Why the discontent? According to Licauco, these movies always presume that humans can only obtain extraordinary powers by accidents, lab experiments gone wrong, pacts with demons, encounters with aliens, and genetic mutations.

Lucy is about a woman who gains the ability to tap into 100% of her brain capacity after some gang tried to use her as a smuggling mule by inserting something into her abdomen. According to a popular myth, the average human only uses 10% of his/her brain's capacity. In the movie, the thing inserted into Lucy's abdomen unexpectedly triggered a process which enabled her to be able to use 100% of her brain. But this "humans utilize only 10% of their brains" is nothing but a myth. A neuro-myth. There's not enough evidence supporting it.

Licauco adds that "in fact" (yes he did use this phrase) there are people who are able to develop mental and psychic powers through mental, physical and spiritual practices. Licauco mentioned monks in Tibet levitating, mystics in India demonstrating telepathic powers, shamans in America stopping the rain at will, and faith healers and psychic surgeons in the Philippines who can cut incisions in the human body with their bare hands.

South American shaman.
Photo: Wikipedia,
Creative Commons License.

Of course, to state the obvious, there's no substantial evidence for all of these claims. Licauco is yet again proclaiming things as true even though these have never been proven as such. Levitation and telepathy have never been proven. You only see these in magic shows by the likes of David Blaine. Needless to say, there are tricks and misdirections involved. People can't levitate nor read other people's minds on their own. And no shamans were ever recorded calling and stopping rain at will.

As to Filipino faith healers and psychic surgeons, they've been debunked over and over again as nothing but frauds and charlatans. If these healers and psychic surgeons can really do what they do, then hospitals and health clinics all over the country will go out of business.

As he always does, Licauco ends his column with a plug of his ESP seminars where he promises to teach you how to develop your ESP the scientific way. Yup, that's what he says - the scientific way. Talk about hijacking real science to push your pseudoscience stuff.