SGU Episode 414

This episode needs: transcription, links, 'Today I Learned' list, categories, segment redirects. Please help out by contributing!

How to Contribute

SGU Episode 414
22nd Jun 2013
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 413                      SGU 415
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
DL: Daniel Loxton
Quote of the Week
Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing
Harlan Ellison
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, today is Wednesday, June 19^th, 2013, and this is your host Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

B: Hey, everybody

S: Rebecca Watson,

R: Hello, everyone.

S: Jay Novella,

J: Hey, guys.

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Salutations, everybody

R: Hello...

S: Salutations and felicitations, Evan.

E: Oh, and felicitations, how could I forget the Squire of Gothos. Shame on me,

S: I don't know (chuckles)

E: shame on me.

R: The hell you guys talking about.

E: Well, Rebecca, aren't you watching the Star Trek series?

R: I guess I haven't gotten up to that point, yet.

E: This is the original series.

R: I'm watching The Next Generation.

S: You know what I saw recently? "Star Trek Continues".

E: Hm?

S: which is a a

J: Wha?

S: fan.. "Star Trek Continues", it's a fan episode, a fan video, where it's as if the ep... the seasons continued as if it wasn't canceled after three seasons. So it's not, it's not like a parody, and it's not an update or a reboot or anything it's like what would a fourth season have actually been like,

B: Oh, cool.

S: and and they do their best to reproduce, the production value, the sets are identical, all the sound effects, the music the acting

R: Hm

S: the whole culture that was definitely embedded in that late '60s you know in terms of everything. And the

?: (inaudible)

S: some of the actors are damn good, the guy who's doing Kirk has his mannerisms down, absolutely down.

B: And it's not a parody of his mannerisms?

S: No, no it's not, it's not a parody, it's an imitation. And it like things like it's like "Yeah, Kirk does do that!" You know, it's like, (laughter) you uh things you wouldn't even think of. Like the

R: That is so Kirk.

S: ways he moves his arms when he walks. Yeah, it's just amazing.

R: Hey, remember that Star Trek episode where, uh, poisonous gas covered most of the planet, and murdered millions of people?

E: Ahhh.

R: Oh, wait, no, that was real life. Oh, my God!

B: (laughs)

E: That's worse.

This Day in Skepticism (1:58)

R: On June 22, 1783, a poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland, uh, finally reached France. So this is kind of, um, I really could have picked any date, uh, it's very interesting, it's something that I didn't even realize was the thing, uh, it was one of the most deadly if not the most deadly volcanic eruptions in human history, as I said it happened in Iceland but it spread all over the globe, uh, first of all though in Iceland it killed about 50% of the livestock which lead to a famine which killed a quarter of the population of Iceland. Uh, so it was pretty immediate but then it also went on to possibly cause droughts in India and Africa which lead to millions of more deaths, uh, as well as crop failures in Europe and air pollution and this deadly gas... from this deadly gas. So, all to... all told, it killed probably over 6 million people

?: What?

R: globally. Yeah, 6 million.

E: That's a lot (inaudible)

R: It was a pretty big volcanic eruption.

E: 1783, that's (inaudible) quite a bit.

B: Holy crap.

R: And the cloud was sulfur dioxide that

E: Oh, that'll do it

R: and also the hydrogen... the hydrogen fluoride apparently I think killed most of the people in Iceland but the sulfur dioxide is what drifted into Europe to start murdering people there. But yeah and it also caused severe global temperature change, uh, it was the hottest summer on record followed by really violent winter with hail and storms and all that good stuff which probably lead to more deaths.

S: It was the longest period of below zero temperatures in New England.

R: Oh, yeah, the US... the US area just had some severe weather. They don't... I.. I didn't find a whole of talk about deaths that resulted in it but I think people were just dying left and right anyway, at that point, so

S: A bad winter in 1783 was no joke.

R: Exactly, yeah, that's... that's what I'm sayin'. But...

B: So this gas released it wasn't part of like a.. a pyroclastic flow, it was just this, just this gas that came out and went

S: Just a bubble of gas

B: all over the place

R: Yeah, like a volcanic fart, silent but deadly

E: Probably wasn't too silent, either

R: Too soon?

?: Too soon (laughter)

S: Volcanoes are no joke, that superheated gas that kills people it's not just the lava and the ash, I mean, it's usually the gas, even if it's not poisonous gas if it's superheated it's like your lungs explode, you know. Well, let's move on, uhm, have you guys heard...

?: (stage inhalation)

?: Uh?

News Items

Osteoarthritis (4:41)

• Science-based Medicine: Knee Osteoarthritis: Thumbs Down for Acupuncture and Glucosamine

S: the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons has released their, uh, 1200 page report evaluating evidence for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis

R: Now the last time you led us into one of these and we made all made light-hearted jokes about how boring the topic was, we got a bunch of angry letters from botanists, so, no, Steve, not gonna fall for it, this sounds fascinating, tell me more. (laughter)

S: Yeah, but like last time I convinced you how cool botany was, now I wanna convince you how cool osteoarthritis is.

E: Here come more letters (laughter)

S: Oh, boy. (laughter)

S: um, so osteoarthritis is, essentially degenerative arthritis of a joint, mainly from wear and tear, but there are other obviously biological factors involved, and so knee osteoarthritis, very common, um, as people get into their 40's and 50's they uh, their knees start to ache, you know, and they just wear out, they just don't really last 80 years unfortunately. There are lots of potential treatments for osteoarthritis including many that are not evidence-based. This report is interesting for a number of reasons, not just for the specific recommendations that are made. Harriet Hall writes about this on Science-based Medicine and I recommend that for those who are interested but I just want to highlight some of the interesting things. First of all, it shows that science-based practitioners actually care about evidence, despite all of the propaganda about "Oh, those doctors only want drugs and surgery" here we have a uh a major you know a professional organization in the United States dedicated to orthopedic surgery reviewing thousands of published studies, putting out a 1200 page comprehensive report looking in-depth into the evidence for many different approaches, and here are the highlights of what they found, where there was strong evidence you know for or against. So glucosamine chondroitin you guys are familiar with this, right, this is a dietary supplement that has been and still is promoted, um, has been for years, for arthritis. What do you think they found?

E: It doesn't work.

S: It doesn't work. So it was one of the few things where there was strong evidence against its effectiveness. Glucosamine and chondroitin doesn't work, there have been large studies. Exercise, strong evidence for, in favor of it. Weight loss, moderate evidence in favor of it. Acupuncture, what do you think they concluded?

R: No evidence.

?: Overwhelming evidence.

S: Strong evidence against its effectiveness. So very nice to see that they took a science-based approach to acupuncture research and didn't fall for the bait-and-switch of "Oh, it works like a placebo" you know, they didn't fall for that business. And also, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories strong evidence they are effective, that's not surprising. And here's one: arthroscopy with lavage and debridement --- strong evidence against.

B: Really?

E: Lavage, huh?

S: So lavage is like just washing it out. So arthroscopy is putting the scope into the knee and looking around, you know, for diagnostic, but if you take anything out then it becomes a therapeutic procedure, right, that's debridement, you know, cutting away any fraying pieces of cartilage and then washing out those pieces, that's the lavage part. So, this is a pretty lucrative, popular procedure for orthopedists to do. And here they are, the official organization of orthopedists, coming out with a statement saying there is strong evidence against the effectiveness of this procedure. This is something that we've written about on Science-based Medicine previously when there...there... when a review came out, I think now about two years ago, showing that arthroscopy was not effective, and there was some push-back from some orthopedists, and we said "Hey, this is the evidence, baby, this is, this is what it shows". So it's nice now to see the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons looking at the evidence and honestly saying "Yep, our beloved procedure, that we would love to have work, doesn't work". So it's hard in the face of this, if you look at the bigger picture, it's hard to justify the typical knee-jerk criticisms that alternative medicine proponents have against mainstream medicine

R: Heh, knee-jerk

S: Yeah, knee-jerk. That it's they only care about drugs and surgery, well here they are saying um, their favorite surgical procedure doesn't work, that they don't care about other things, here they're strongly in favor of exercise, moderately in favor of weight loss, Um, and that they're not, they don't care about actually treating people, well, this is, I think this shows their dedication to the evidence to what actually works regardless of what the modality is, and this is, this is, what we see in mainstream medicine all the time. This is a Herculean effort and it's great document, but this is what we see all the time, you know, the... academic professional uh physicians looking at the evidence objectively and the chips fall where they may, in its direct contradiction to all the anti-mainstream medicine conspiracy theories that you're going to hear from the alternative medicine side, so I thought that was worth pointing out. Also, Harriet pointed out something interesting, things like homeopathy didn't even make the list, it wasn't even worth their time to take a look at.

B: Oh, awesome.

E: Good.

S: Yeah.

R. Good (inaudible).

E: I don't know if we'd be able to say that if this were British Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, right? That probably would have made that list.

S: Homeopathy probably would have,

E: Yes

S: just because homeopathy is more popular across the pond, yeah.

B: Uh, Steve, did they mention why it wasn't on the list?

S: No, just... it didn't even... didn't even make the radar. Just wasn't even, yeah, not... not mentioned one way or the other.

B: OK

Quickie with Bob (10:27)

• ESO: New Kind of Variable Star Discovered

E: Oh, hey, wait, wait. I would like a Quickie with Bob right now.

B: Really?

E: Yes, right this moment.

B: Thank you, Evan, I'm almost certain you will not regret this.

E: (laughs)

B: This is your Quickie with Bob. Astronomers in Chile, guys, have discovered a new type of variable star it was pretty interesting story uh they did detailed observations of 3700 stars in this specific cluster over 7 years. Um, and showed that they found 36 of these stars had very minute changes in their brightness of about only about a tenth of a percent over an hour or as much as over 20 hours. And uh this is... this is big news in the community because variable stars are in... are incredibly common there's lots of different types of variable stars and it's always interesting to... to add another one to the group actually the list of uh of typ... of variable stars um the types themselves was much bigger than... than I remember them being but just to break it down real quick there's... there's two different main types of stars that are variable, there's the intrinsic and extrinsic and it's kind of obvious what they... what that means the intrinsic stars that are variable are variable because of that's just the way they are something about their internal dynamics makes them makes the light output variable whereas the extrinsic... the extrinsic stars... variable stars are variable only because you know say something might move in front of them or... or there might be some... something in the way that changes the light that reaches the Earth. So within these intrinsic stars there's... there's just a few categories there's the pulsating variables, there's the eruptives, and there's the cataclysmic or explosive variable stars. This new one that they found I think is pretty obvious that it's within the... the pulsating variable star category

S: Is there a throbbing category? (laughter)

E: Is there a grooving category?

B: So like I said these variables are most certainly they'll be within the pulsating variety they haven't actually named this type of variable yet but I'm sure it's gonna be within that... that category They're not sure why they pulsate, either, basically because current models say that they should not be variable so this is the real surprise that these... that these varied so much and but one clue that they found is that many of these variables rotate very very fast

S: Yeah, that seems pretty telling

B: Yeah, more than 50% of their critical velocity, in fact, and the critical velocity

E: Wow

B: is a velocity that if they... if they reached 100% they would actually start throwing off mass so they're spinning very very fast and uh this spinning might... may have an effect on the dynamics of their interiors which then would result in the variability of the light output. So, uh, so keep an eye on it, I'm curious to see what they're gonna call it and uh, and... and you know what more they can determine, um, about these types of stars based on uh, on... on this... these studies that they're... these very detailed studies that they're doing. So, uh, so I got guys this has been your Quickie with Bob, I hope it was good for you, too.

News items continued

Patenting DNA (13:07)

• BBC News: US Supreme Court says human DNA cannot be patented

S: Thanks, Bob. OK, Rebecca, you're gonna tell us about a major Supreme Court case regarding patenting genes.

R: Yes, you are correct, Steve. There is a huge decision that just happened in the Supreme Court on, uh, June 13th, the Supreme Court ruled that, uh, companies, particularly Myriad Genetics, in this case, cannot patent a human gene. So in this specific case, it was this company Myriad Genetics which was one of the patent holders on the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes. Now, astute listeners might recall that we were recently talking about these very genes, in the case of Angelina Jolie,

S: Yeah.

R: who came out and said that she had the mutation in her BRCA gene that said she was much much much more likely to get breast cancer and ovarian cancer and so she had her breast removed. Now, we also mentioned that Angelina Jolie had spoken briefly about the fact that not everyone has access to the genetic testing required to find out if you have the mutation, in order to get the life saving operations you would need. Well, the reason why many people don't have access to this genetic testing is because Myriad Genetics was one of the patent holders and... and they were the only company that was allowed to perform this testing on these genes. So, if you wanted to find if you had the mutation you had to go through Myriad Genetics and that increases the price dramatically so they could charge thousands of dollars to people who wanted the testing. What this ruling means in this specific case it's a huge win for women particularly because this means that you... women can go get genetic testing anywhere to find out if they have this mutation they don't have to go through Myriad in order to find out, so, now you have companies competing against each other, prices go down, etc., etc., and more lives are saved because of it, so that's one result of this and one of the reasons why women's rights groups were a huge part of the uh lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court decision it was a unanimous decision the case was led by uh the ACLU um representing women's rights groups as well as scientists and other interest groups but also scientists win from this case because it means that uh any scientist can now pursue research on the... these genes where prior to this only Myriad and the other patent holders would technically be able to do that. Basically the court ruled that you can't patent a human gene however they did leave it open that you could possibly patent a gene that had been fiddled with.

?: Yeah.

R: So uh if you

?: (inaudible) huge

R: come up with your own gene, like a synthetic gene like cDNA... c... cDNA, that could still be eligible for a patent. Uh, but because Myriad the company did not actually create anything, they just researched the gene they're not allowed to patent it.

S: Yeah. So

R: So

S: products of nature cannot be patented and what this decision was exploring specifically was how much modification is necessary before a product of nature is an innovation. An... yeah, this that needed to be explored for the in... for this specific case of genes. And it seems that everyone pos... with the possible exception of Myriad, is happy about this decision this is a... I've seen nothing but universal praise for this decision.

E: Myriad shouldn't be too sad their stock rose that day

S: Is that right? (laughs)

E: as a result, yeah.

R: They have been fighting this

E: That will fade.

R: for a very long time so this is a huge loss for them, but it's... it is a great gain for humanity, we're

S: Yeah, for humanity.

R: literally talking about lives being saved

E: Yeah, absolutely.

R: and more research being done.

B: Yeah, it does seem...

R: So it is a good thing.

B: it does seem (inaudible) to me lots of benefits but what about the idea, the one negative thing that I've heard, that I've seen in a couple of places was that some people are afraid that companies like Myriad, of course, will scale back investment because they're not gonna be rewarded ah with patents for this so I just wonder how much of a genuine concern that aspect of this is.

R: Consider how much research is done by private companies compared to the huge amount of research that's currently being done through government institutions and universities. Private companies have always focussed on what's going to make the most money and that's why we have uh government funding for scientific endeavors. There's one other thing I wanted to mention, a bit of, uh, myth-busting. This... this thing was going around that... uh, Scalia doesn't believe in genetics, or in molecular biology. So, uh, it was a unanimous decision but Justice Scalia wrote a separate thing... ruling...

S: Separate opinion.

R: opinion, thank you, that's the word.

E: Opinion, yeah.

R: Uh, Scalia wrote a separate opinion uh saying that he, uh, agrees to vote with the majority, but he does not agree with one part of the opinion that has no effect on his final vote. What he said was, um, that he wouldn't sign on to Part 1a and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology because he can't affirm those details on his own knowledge or his own belief. So, Part 1a, deal... it's just a list of basic facts about DNA, about genetics, uh it's all kind of just basic level genetic stuff.

E: So was he basically saying I don't know what this is?

R: Yeah, you know, so some...

E: and therefore I can't really

R: some people were

E: say anything about it.

R: taking uh that he wouldn't affirm those details on his own knowledge or his own belief to mean that he didn't believe in genetics or he didn't know about genetics and so he didn't believe them, something like that. But, I've heard from lawyers who have said that this is a bit of legal-speak in a way, that there's this sort of ongoing argument on whether or not they should in... judges should include basic information that's not necessary to the final ruling, and so that's kind of what he was saying, is that this chunk I'm not a scientist, I'm not going to sign my name on this and say that as a Justice I approve of this because I have no idea I'm not a scientist and it has nothing to do with the case.

S: He's being a legal stickler,

R: Yes.

S: not a science denier.

R: Exactly.

B: Oh, OK.

R: That...

E: Right.

R: that's what I'm hearing from... from lawyers, and

S: That makes sense.

R: it makes sense to me.

S: And that's kind of his shtick, too,

R: Yeah.

S: is to be a legal stickler.

B?: Hmmm, OK.

Foot Fungus (20:02)

• Science News: Foot fungi a thriving, diverse community

S: OK, well thanks, Rebecca. Bob, can you explain to me why my toes occasionally itch? (laughter)

R: Ew, bugs, probably.

B: Well, guys, uh, last May... at the end of last May, uh, the, uh, the issue of Nature, they discuss the... the first census... the very first census of skin-dwelling fungi (fung-ee), that... that's

S: Fungi (fung-guy)?

B: Well, there's three ways to pronounce it as far as I can tell

S: Fungi (fun-jee)?

B: Fungi (fung-ee), fungi (fung-eye), fungi (funj-eye). Those are the three that I came across

R: But "fungi" (fung-eye) is the only one that works with that "mushroom walks into a bar" joke.

B: OK.

S: What about... what about "fungi" (fun-jee)?

B: That's actually my preferred pronunciation and I didn't find it. So, whatever, I'll just go with... I'll just go with one of the ones that I found. So this study reveals

E: (chuckles)

B: there's a fungus among us. OK, somebody had to say it, it's out of the way, I said it. So, actually, it...

E: (laughs)

B: it reveals that there's a little variation... there's very little variation in the fungal communities on our bodies except for our feet which calls home to 80 to 100 different types of fungus, they're just like all

?: (inaudible)

B: over the place down there. So, for... just for a quick

?: (inaudible)

B: high-level refresher uh fungi (fung-ee) are the third type of multi-cellular organisms, they're neither plant nor animals, um, one major difference between them and the other two is that their cell walls contain chitin, now that's (inaudible) that's like the exoskeleton of a crabs and lobsters or... or even the beaks of squid uh made of chitin. Uh, fungi play a pivotal role in decomposing organic matter and cycling uh nutrients in the environment and they also appear to be inordinately fond of feet. So here's a quick quote from the study: "A human's skin surfaces are complex ecosystems for microorganisms including fungi, bacteria and viruses which are known collectively as the skin microbiome". So I was as... I was surprised as I said that this initial study was the first of its kind. It seems, I guess, in terms of... yeah, human cohabitation bacteria and viruses get all.. get all the press and all the research dollars, so one reason why the lowly fungus I guess may have been neglected is that it's notoriously difficult to culture, I didn't know that, unlike bacteria which is easy, culturing a fungus from say uh the toenail can take weeks... weeks for it

S: And yet... and yet it's hard to kill when you wanna get rid of it.

B: (chuckle) Right. So... so how did they do it? They looked... they looked at the DNA, of course. They took ten volunteers and they swabbed 14 sites on their bodies including taking toenail clippings apparently. Uh, they then put them in a DNA sequencer which of course is uh one of the key technologies advanced by leaps and bounds uh by the Human Genome Project. Um, they used these molecular tags that stick only to the fungal DNA, so they wouldn't have to worry about all the human DNA and the bacterial DNA and viral DNA, that... that... that was mixed into the samples, so now they have this pure sample of just... of just fung... uh the fungus DNA. They then examined the tiny bits of fungal DNA uh called the phylogenetic markers to tally up all the different types of... of fungal species and bam, they were done, they had... they had a tally of all the different types of species. So, if you look most anywhere on the head or the torso you... you're likely to find one genus and that's called Malassezia. Uh, different areas have different species uh though, like the crease behind your ear or... or on your forehead there's little variation there. Surprisingly, your hands have tons of bacteria but very few fungal communities. So your feet, though, it's... it's completely different ecosystem, um, on your... on your toenails alone there's forty different uh fungi varieties, sixty between your toes, and eighty live on the bottom of... of your heel, which I think would ac... I wouldn't think that would be the most plentiful spot I would think, like, between your toes would have more but apparently there's lots of 'em on the bottom of your heel. So... so why is... how come? Why... why is this so? And it...

E: Gravity.

B: Yeah, gra... (laughs)

E: (chuckles)

B: Well it's... it's not hard to imagine one... one reason, right, your feet are... are often on contact with surfaces that fungi like to hang out on like your socks or locker room floors. I never walk barefoot at... at the gym, uh, never would do it.

E: Uhhhh,

B: So also

E: gosh... (inaudible) so bad.

B: your... your feet... I didn't know that your feet are cooler than other parts of your body, and... and fungi like cooler places, apparently, they hang out. Um, so... so should we all be grossed out? Are you guys like really grossed out... about this stuff?

R: (inaudible) obviously

?: Ahhh...

E: (inaudible) more grossed out about...

R: It takes more than that to... gross out Steve.

B: Yeah, I... I'm not...

S: Oh, yeah...

B: Yeah, I wouldn't think Steve would be, but I'm not... I'm not

S: I've had my head inside of a corpse

B: Cool, um...

R: Hey, thanks for that...

E: A human corpse? Wait, a human corpse?

B: I di...

S: Yeah.

B: Of course.

S: So has everyone who has gone through medical school.

E: You put your head in the corpse?

S: Well, you gotta get into the anatomy, I mean you gotta... you know you're disecting something...

E: I don't...

S: They... so, you get so grossed out in your first year of medical school you're basically done getting grossed out for life.

?: Yeah.

R: Yeah.

B: Totally desensitized.

R: I don't... I don't find what you've said so gross, Bob, but when in... you're talking I was thinking of that... toenail fungus, uh, commercial where...

E: Oh, yeah.

R: where the germ, like, lifts up

E: Little critters.

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah!

R: the toenail and then climbs inside and that's like the worst... worst commercial ever made.

B: Oh, my God I remember that something about detaching a toenail yes I... I cringe

R: Yeah.

B: every time I saw that, nothing to do with the

R: It's awful.

B: fungus or anything but it's just the lifting that toenail

R: Yeah, like the fungus didn't help

B: was nasty. Yeah right, yes. I mean it doesn't gross me out, the... thinking that there's... em... potentially s... you know... well over a hundred different types of these guys all over us. I thin... it's good... it's good that we're colonized by these critters because they're... they're likely to prevent other nasty... guys from taking hold on our skin so it's good that they're there. Likewise, this.. this research can actually help improve our treatment for skin disease and maybe even help with some types of cancers, some people were saying. So... so I say embrace the... the fungi living on your skin, you really don't have much of a choice until we replace them all with nanobots.

Chinese Fake Alien (25:46)

• The Telegraph: Chinese farmer jailed for making a rubber alien

S: All right, thanks, Bob. Evan, you're gonna tell us about a fake Chinese alien. (laughter)

?: Oh, God.

E: Now that could mean several different things, I'll... I'll do my best to clarify. Now, there are times when news outlets totally, totally botch their headlines... right, I mean really botch

B: No.

E: We've talked about some real doozies on the show. But rarely do we give them credit when they actually get it right. Let's give The Telegraph its due, because they got this headline spot-on. They wrote: "Chinese farmer jailed for making rubber alien". That kind-a says it all.

?: OK.

E: (chuckles) So it's being reported out of the Shandong province, that, uh, local police recently arrested someone named Mr. Li, a farmer slash alien enthusiast by day and an alien enthusiast farmer... slash farmer by night. And here are his versions of the event, this is Mr. Li.

S: "Mr. Li" 's a pseudonym, probably, by the way.

E: He said:

"I was setting an electrical trap for rabbits by the Yellow River, when I saw a bright light. Above my bike, a UFO was floating. One by one, five aliens came down, but one of them stumbled onto one of my rabbit traps and was electricuted. The others went back into their ship and flew away."

So that's his story.

S: Quite a tale he's got there. So this alien from who knows how far away from another solar system in super advanced technology and then dies in a rabbit trap.

E: Exa...

S: And his friends leave him behind.

E: And they leave him behind.

R: Was he rabbit shit? (laughter)

E: No.

R: Maybe he was... maybe he was a rabbit, like from another dimension.

E: Well, then rabbits look an awful lot like little grays with Chinese accentuations around the eyes

B?: Yes.

E: and head and stuff. But

B: Plus... plus only mice... only mice are from other dimensions.

E: But how did he go about backing up his claim. Well he does what any true believer does and he post pictures of the ET on the Internet. And in three days these pictures happen to go viral, so after five days of having posted the pictures the local police show up at his door and he's taken in for questioning. Now during the questioning Mr. Li admitted, willingly or otherwise, that the whole thing was a hoax.

S: Shock, shocked.

E: He made an alien, he constructed it himself out of this gluey rubber sort of substance uh tied together with ropes and uh other things and you know... a few... he... he drew his inspiration from the Simon Peg film Paul I don't know if you guys have seen that

?: Hall?

R: Yeah, the one where they go to Comicon.

S: Yes.

E: Right... right.

S: Yes, I saw it.

E: And the alien does a little bit sort of kind of look like that I suppose.

S: But you're right, Evan, the... the uh alien head looks Chinese.

E: It... it does (chuckles).

S: It does... so I mean it's his cultural bias leaking through in his sculpture and he's not aware of it but to these Western you know American eyes it has this... it looks like uh something... that it... like an piece of art that a Chinese person would create.

E: Right.

S: You know, it's not just the eyes it's the mouth it's everything you know it's just there's a subtle sort of Oriental appearance to it. Uh, which is always, I think, a... a very telling sign to look for when people are imagining or faking alien phenomena and their cultural biases come through, and of course we're... you're much more attuned to them when it's from a di... from another culture.

E: But why did he... why did he do it why did you think he did it well he says it with the intent of helping more people believe in aliens. Which is

S: Yeah.

R: Weird.

E: an interesting way to go about doing that... uh, I suppose... um, he claims that and these are his words again:

It's still disputed whether or not UFOs and aliens exist but we believe

not sure what he means by we

they do and we want to expand our group

I don't know what group he's part of... uh

and make more people believe that aliens do exist.

So that's

R: Was this him

E: the approach.

R: saying this or was this

E: That was him.

R: the government saying that he said that.

E: Uh, that is the report from The Telegraph say... uh... which is quoting him as saying that.

R: Hm.

S: Who knows.

E: Yeah you who... who really knows. It's for the conspiry theori... conspiracy theorists,

S: (chuckle)

E: I guess to... to... to sort of figure it

R: Well, you know I mean you don't have to stretch far to come up with a conspiracy involving the Chinese government making a guy say something (chuckle) I mean

E: (chuckle)

R: making a Chinese prisoner say something that they want him to say. Um...

E: That's true.

B: Yeah, my mind all bets are off

R: Yeah, especially if they wanna

B: soo as he... soo as he ga... soo as the government got a hold of him they can well, nothing he says now... really (chuckle) you know whatever

R: Even if it was just a case of they... they wanted to trump up the charge a bit so they didn't look like they were just hassling some farmer, now they've got like a cult that they can

?: Yeah

R: pin on him, you know,

?: Yeah, yeah

E: But

R: 'cuz they're... they hate... they hate the cults.

E: Mr. Li spent five days incarcerated, the crime was fabricating lies and disrupting normal social order.

B: Oh, boy, wow.

E: Yeah, that... that doesn't sound too Orwellian or anything (inaudible)

S: Yeah, disrupting the social order that yeah really Orwellian, I agree

?: scary

E: Now, guys, to wrap this up, I'll say that the rubber alien was examined by scientists and deemed to be a hoax, the dead giveaway is when they broke open the alien and pulled out a slip of paper with a fortune, that's right

S: (laughs)

B: Oh!

E: And it... and the fort... it read "Help I'm being held prisoner in a Chinese bakery

R: Hm, hm.

E: and your lucky numbers are 4, 14, 22, 31, and 49". So

?: Jesus

E: that sort of sealed the deal.

B: Oh, boy.

R: That joke fails, though, on the fact that fortune cookies aren't Chinese.

S: Yeah, that's true.

E: No, that enhances the joke and the... gaw.... (inaudible, possibly expletive) (laughter)

Who's That Noisy? (31:24)

S: All right, well Evan, you also have to tell us about Who's That Noisy.

E: I will do that, now, um... what we'll do is next week we're gonna reveal last week's winner.

S: We're recording a little ahead of schedule 'cause of... we're on our TAM recording schedule, so, the... we're gonna have to get caught up on the Who's That Noisy-s t... towards the end

E: Right

R: We might all be dead right now.

S: (chuckles) That's true.

E: Maybe, I mean who knows, another volcano you know might spew

R: Hm

E: sulfur dioxide or whatever the hell's

R: could happen

E: gonna come out of it, however, we do have a puzzle for this week, so that will be this week's Who's That Noisy, is a puzzle and, here we go. So, there is this machine, OK? Now this machine does one thing. It shuffles playing cards. However, this machine always rearranges cards in the same way relative to the original order of the cards. OK, we're talking about a deck of playing cards here. Now all of the hearts arranged in order from ace to king were put into the machine. The cards were shuffled, and then they were put into the machine again. After the second... after the second shuffling, the cards were in the following order: 10, 9, queen, 8, king, 3, 4, ace, 5, jack, 6, 2, 7. So you need to tell us, now, what order were the cards in after the first shuffle.

S: Very tricksy.

R: Eh-hm.

E: It is tricksy, yeah.

B: (inaudible)

E: I don't know if, uh... I don't if Bilbo would have gotten that in the cave while he was dueling it out...

B: Ahhh.

E: (inaudbile) wits with Gollum

S: Not without a pen and paper, I don't think

E: (laughs) that's for sure (laughs). So... think about that

S: Or quill and parchment

E: Qua... yes, of course, Middle Earth and all... wtn@theskepticsguide.org or sguforums.com is the forum's website... so... think about it, give us your best answer, and good luck to everyone.

Questions and Emails

Can We Know Everything? (33:23)

S: All right, thanks, Evan. We do have one email for this week. This one comes from Mark Dennehy from Melbourne, and Mark writes:

I have been listening to the show for 4 years and although I have always been a sceptic

with a C

I have learnt a great deal from your show. I would like to hear the rogues view on whether science has the potential to explain the physical world in such a way that we understand everything. Is there a limit to what we can comprehend? For example a dog has no concept of quantum gravity and wouldn’t ask the question of himself "Is space-time fundamentally continuous or discrete?" We have gone from asking ourselves how to grow food to "why is there far more matter than antimatter in the observable universe?" Our brain appears finite in capacity so I would assume that would limit our ability to understand the world around us. Reaching a limit at some stage seems inevitable. Or will our brains develop as we need to solve increasingly more difficult questions, after all our brains appear

to need... our brains appear

not to need to store every bit of information we discover perhaps more the ability to solve a problem, and the capacity to grasp the variables at that time. I could be wrong though. Your opinions would be greatly appreciated and interesting.
(Mark Dennehy, Melbourne)

Thank you, Mark. So, what do you guys think?

R: I already learned everything there is to know

?: (inaudible)

R: when I was a teenager, so...

S: Yeah.

E: So you're done.

B: (inaudible)

R: Q.E.D.

E: You maxxed out.

R: Uh, hm.

B: I think we're definitely not smart enough to understand everything, I mean there's always gonna be... som... I think there's always gonna be some ways to explain aspects of nature that... that... that could be beyond us. It's amazing that we've... that we've come this far but I think as we progress I think there's definitely areas that we'll hit that will be just... just it'll be similar to a dog trying to think about quantum gravity but the thing is that, uh, it's not just our brains anymore, I mean we'll you know we'll have you know aids, we'll have in... we'll have supercomputers and eventually even artificial intelligence that wi... that will help us and work with us and probably eventually completely outclass us in... in understanding this stuff. So, um, and then... they'll... they'll also be, I believe, uh, br... you know, uh, we'll not evolve our brains but we'll en... we'll artificially enhance our brains. There's lots of ways to g... (inaudible) to do that

S: We'll probably do both.

B: So, yeah, so... so I think there's... th... th... there'll probably be very little that, um, that we won't eventually figure out... who knows how long that'll take... but I think, uh, we will hav... we... we have and we will have the ability to understand, uh, as much as can be understood.

S: Well, yeah, I think there's two ways to look at this question. One is, wha you were discussing, Bob, which is the finite limitations of the human brain. I agree that there are probably limitations to our ability to understand the universe, but, we will augment, evolve, supplement, our brains as technology progresses. That ther... there's no, I guess, theoretical limit to that, so, um, through those tools I think we... we, you know, that... that.. that limitation wi... is something that we can surpass. The other way to think about that, though, about just, um, cognitive limitations... I'm not sure, I've never liked the analogy to the dog. Maybe

B: Why?

S: it's apt but, uh, I'm not sure because it seems like there is not just a quantitative but a qualitative difference, between a dog and a human brain... that maybe once you have the ability to think about things at a certain level then you're there and then... then, you know, you... that gives you qualitative abilities, you know, of investigation, of asking questions, of exploration. Right, so it's not just that... you... we're a certain amount farth.. more intelligent than a dog therefore we can understand a certain amount more about the universe

B: Uh, huh.

S: It's that, we can engage in a kind of introspection and exploration and questioning that a dog can't even engage in at all.

R: Yeah, but, I mean there are apes who can engage in a certain level of that much more than a dog but less than humans, so, (inaudible) surely we can imagine a level up from us, right, where there's something we're missing. Like there's... there're very few things that humans are capable of, that apes or other animals can't do in some capacity.

S: I... (inaudible) I agree, that is possible, I'm not convinced that has to be the case, though, that's my point. It's possible that... uh... our current abilities are limited and we won't be able to figure out the universe but it's also possible that we have the tools necessary and now it's just a matter of applying them.

B: So... so we've passed some sort of cognitive threshold, where we

S: Yeah.

B: could eventually figure out everything, but... so what you're saying is that we... we could pretty much figure out most anything but what I'm taking away from that, though, is that it might... it might be so fiendishly difficult that it would take... that it could take uh... an extremely long time for us to find... to ev... to finally wrap our heads aroung something.

E: Oh, yeah.

S: Right, so... so, so far we're talking about the one approach to this problem which is the... the human capacity. And, again, there's a couple of ways to look at that which we explored. The other way to look at this question is "Is it even theoretically possible to understand everything about the universe". There may be limitations to the ability of any intelligent creature to gain certain bits of knowledge, and I think, first of all, I think that that... that is absolutely true, there are things that we will never know, because the information is lost. It's just lost to the universe... but depends on what ya mean by understanding everything about the universe.

E: Right, that's what I thought too, yeah.

S: Yeah, so like, what, like what color

E: It's nebulous.

S: was a certain dinosaur, you know, again, that... that information

E: Right.

S: may be lost to the universe. But let's put that aside so that, we'll... we'll say OK obviously we can't know about information that's lost to the universe. You... you could frame questions about the universe that cannot be explored by science.

B: Yeah, and I would add to that, Steve, uh, you... chaotic systems, you know, sensitive dependency

S: Yeah.

B: on initial conditions. Those things are inherently unpredictable no matter how smart and no matter what technology you have, so, I would add that, but that's kind of a... maybe a trivial addition, an obvious addition.

S: Right. And there may be other questions like "What happened before the Big Bang" that we just... we will... may never figure out a way to... to fi... to answer that question.

R: But, of course, you (inaudible) even with that we've already started reaching back before the Big Bang, and making some observations

E: Inferences,

R: so

E: yeah.

S: Yeah.

R: yeah...

S: Yeah, I agree, (inaudible) we've started to make some inferences but there... but there may be limits.

R: Yeah,

S: (inaudible)

R: I agree with that. I... I feel though, that in general tha.. I... I... I think there's also a difference between... (inaudible) everything there is to know about the things we know about, and then is there... if there's a... if there's a gap in our understanding that we can identify will we have the tools to fill that gap, but also, are there... are we constantly surrounded by gaps we're not even ever going to realize just because of the limits of our own

B: Yeah.

R: senses and things. Um, I

S: Right.

R: think that's a possibility as well.

S: Yeah, it's (inaudible) it's sort of the, uh, things that we don't know we don't know.

R: Exactly.

?: Uh, huh.

S: Yeah. All right, guys, uh, well, let's go on to our interview.

Interview with Daniel Loxton (40:25)

About his new book: Abominable Science

Science or Fiction (58:37)

Item #1: New fossil evidence reveals the presence of kangaroo ancestors 25 million years ago in what is now Europe. Item #2: Researchers find that male guppies can reproduce up to 10 months after they have died. Item #3: Scientists have discovered a material that gets larger under pressure, in apparent defiance of the laws of physics.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:13:12)

Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing.

Harlan Ellison

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at theskepticsguide.org, where you will find the show notes as well as links to our blogs, videos, online forum, and other content. You can send us feedback or questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. Also, please consider supporting the SGU by visiting the store page on our website, where you will find merchandise, premium content, and subscription information. Our listeners are what make SGU possible.

References