Quantum Woo and the Science of Transgender

In addition to writing here at Skeptoid, I get my daily fix of science blogging by writing the Transgender Science blog. Usually, there's not much intersection between the two. However, an e-mail dropped in my lap this week has brought these two worlds together like peanut butter and gluten-free organic ionized chocolate.

The e-mail, sent by one Gianno Marricco, was promoting an eBook for sale on Amazon.com,The Science of Transgenderism. There's an accompanying website,The Science of Transgenderism, which more or less serves as an advertisement for the eBook and offers a preview of the book's main thesis.

And what is that thesis? That transgender people can use quantum physics to changetheir physical gender without surgery or hormone therapy.

Here's a sampling of the claims made on the page:

This idea synthesized with the human body as a quantum gravity mechanism has led to the Area.Mass.Density.Time models of the body, specifically my own. This means the desired genetalia of transgendered people exists in what popular physics, today calls extra dimensions. The undesired genetalia has a strong connection to the desired genetalia in the extra dimension and should be given away by macroscopic fluctuations.

Back in Skeptoid episode #217, Brian Dunning talked about Argument from Quantum Physics: making a far-out claim with a bunch of jargon related to quantum theory and then hoping that everyone is impressed but that no one actually understands. This passage is the very embodiment of Argument from Quantum Physics. From "quantum gravity mechanism" to "macroscopic fluctuations," there's a whole lot of meaningless word salad here (and a lot of repetition of "genetalia").

More from the page:

The area mass density time models are proof enough for me that there are extra hidden dimensions, comprising our everything. One of the obvious first examples is a plant growing, in stop motion, we can see the effects of quantum gravity, but it’s become obvious. The theoretical explanation is making sense of all the uvIR information saturation and homing in on, an energy signature that is giving the full Einsteinien picture.

I have tried to Google the claim that watching plants grow in stop motion somehow reflects the effects of quantum gravity, but the Internet seems silent. The closest I could come were some articles about the effects that microgravity has on growing plants. Maybe it's not as "obvious" as the author thinks?

The whole point of the page, as best I can read through the meaningless jargon, seems to be that somehow transgender individuals canwill themselvesinto transitioning genders, because, as the author puts it:

The energy Randall and Sundrum are after should be searched in table top experiments by measuring the time required for full gender transformation. [...] The visual representation is taken from the specific tensor orchestration of testicles becoming ovaries and vice versa. This is a specific operation and so transgender transformation becomes an example of visible extra dimensions.Here energy transforms, changes and is continuous making up the matter we are made of. There is more to discover once we can grasp James Maxwell Clerks’ superman which all humans must understand the body better. Meditation and body self-evaluation is the future of human evolution.

Or more simply put: because race car.

I've had little luck in identifying much about the author of The Science of Transgender, Gianno Marricco. The page says that he is located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and this LinkedIn profile for a Gianni Marricco seems a possible fit -- right name, right city, and his current profession is listed as "science enthousiast [sic]."A search for the "Zallo Institute," with which the author claims to be affiliated, turns up nothing but web hits posted in the last week or so for The Science of Transgenderism.

In the end, this is just one more example of the kinds of quantum woo in the world. The only thing exceptional about this woo is that it's the first one I've come across to attach itself to transgenderism. Maybe the transgender community should be flattered that it's finally gotten its own crank; it means we're moving up in the world.