SGU Episode 33

Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday March 9, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today, as always, is Perry DeAngelis...

P: Yes. I'm here.

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Hello, everyone.

S: And Bob Novella.

B: Good evening.

S: Well, for those of you out here who maybe have not listened to our podcast before, just a little bit about the Skeptics' Guide. We are a discussion&mdash;a weekly podcast that we discuss science items, skeptical items, paranormal, pseudo-science, controversial claims. The kinds of news items that get missed by the mainstream media. And we discuss everything from a very hard-nosed scientific point of view.

P: We are both riveting and entertaining.

S: Absolutely. And we have fun doing it.

P: (chuckles) Yes.

S: Coming on our show in just a little bit is Rebecca Watson. Rebecca is the founder of the Skepchicks organization; we'll be talking to her in just a moment. But first, we'll start, as usual, with some news items; things that have caught our attention over the last week.

Magnet Therapy (1:27)
S: The British national health service recently decided to pay for magnet therapy to help prevent chronic ulcers. Now, England&mdash;Britain,as you may or may not know, has a national health service. They have socialized medicine, although what they have is a two-tiered health system. There's a private health system for people who have money and there's a national health service for everybody else. So, this is basically a government-run health care system. And they decide, from the top down, at a bureaucratic level, what they're going to pay for and what they're not going to pay for. And they decided&mdash;this is the first time they're deciding to pay for magnet therapy for anything. Which was, you know, quite a bit of news. Of course, the alternative medicine proponents are hailing this as a victory.

P: (chuckles) (English accent) Bunch of bloody rot.