SGU Episode 86

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SGU Episode 86
March 14th 2007
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 85                      SGU 87
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
Quote of the Week
“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”
Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World
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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. This is your host, Stephen Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, and today is Wednesday, March 14^th, 2007. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello everyone.

S: Perry D'Angelis...

P: Eve.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening my friends.

J: Hey Evan.

S: How is everyone this evening?

P: Well, Jay is back.

B:Good.

J: I'm back.

P: Terra Firma, the 48 contiguous.

J: I'm back and I'm almost black. I got so tanned by accident there, I wasn't even trying.

S: It's sunny in Hawaii, I'm shocked.

P: Was it hot?

J: No. Hawaii is probably the best place on earth. It's beautiful.

P: Is there a big hole in the ozone over the island?

J: It's a peculiar place because it's too good. It's too beautiful, the weather's too perfect, the people are too nice. Anyone that can go. I went to Maui. Every island is different from what I heard. I just went to Maui, but Maui was gorgeous. It was gorgeous.

S: Jay, you were supposed to report back on some pseudoscience in Hawaii. Did you succeed in finding any pseudoscience in paradise?

J: Yeah, I did. I mean, I did speak to a few people. I had a couple of issues that I was looking for answers for. Without going into too much detail, there's a very well-believed myth that if you take lava rock from Hawaii, you get cursed. So I did a little research. I mean, anyone could do this. I didn't have to go to Hawaii to do the research. But the basic research is Pele is the volcano god of the Hawaiian people and Pele, from the things that I've read and the people that I spoke to, the people believe that Pele is kind of like the grantor of the food and fruits and the beauty of Hawaii. And Pele granted the people the lava, which is the island, in a different way to look at it. And through that, the gift that she gave, if you take the lava, if you take any lava rock with you, you're-

P: It's a woman?

J: Yeah. Pele curses you for taking her gift to the Hawaiian people, so you're not supposed to leave the island with it, right? This woman, I think her mother was born on Hawaii and her mother, she told me this story about her mother left Hawaii and then came back and took some lava rock and she actually mailed-

P: She exploded.

J: That would have been pretty cool. The woman actually mailed back the lava rock. And I remember Bob saying before I left that he heard that as well. So what did I do? I actually had to mail something when I was in Hawaii and there's a post office there because it's the United States. So I go in, I mail it-

R: It's the United States.

S: Yeah, because they don't have post offices outside the United States.

J: You know what I mean. It's funny because you don't have-

B: They don't have U.S. post offices.

J: It's so tropical. You don't think you're in the United States, but anyway. So I'm in there and I'm just basically sending a letter, I'm buying one stupid stamp from the guy and I'm like, hey, can I ask you a question? I said, I heard that people mail back the lava rock. And he said, yeah, they do. As a matter of fact, every post office there has a big outdoor storage unit just for the lava rock that they get. And at the end of the year, they all basically take a day and they all unbox it and I guess they put it back to where a lot of the lava rock is on whatever island that they're on. So it's big enough that they're getting thousands and thousands of packages and it's a big deal for them to handle it. So instead of doing it every day, they only handle unpackaging it once a year. So that's a lot of lava rock that people take and send back because people believe, they believe the story of the curse of the lava rock. And I found out that that story was actually made up by one of the park rangers that was working. The guy's name was Russ Apple and he was a volcano national park ranger. And he made up the story.

R: How did you find that out?

J: I found that on the internet and someone in Hawaii told me. I think a park ranger may have made it up that there was the only person there that actually that I met that lived there that didn't believe it. I spoke to a park ranger about that, another park ranger about it. And I also spoke to her about the Menehune. And those are basically the Hawaiian, the legendary and mystical like forest dwellers and they're supposed to be like leprechauns. That's everyone.

S: Like Hawaiian leprechauns.

J: Yeah. And the real quick on them is, and I'm, these two stories kind of mix, so I'm just going to give the real quick on them.

P: Get over here, lad. I've got to lay for you.

E: This is off with me pot of lava.

J: Some people think that they actually did exist historically that it was the fables came from people that actually did exist way back in the history of when people first started to populate Hawaii and everything. But basically, no, no, no, they, they never found any, any excavations that they've done. Never found any skeletons of any smaller creatures or anything, any humanoids like that, but-

R: No lucky charms.

J: They're attributed to doing things like accomplishing big feats of work at night.

S: They have big feet in Hawaii too?

J: Oh, Christ. So basically they are what Perry's describing. They're like the little people, they do, they do things at night, nobody, they don't want to be seen. And they're, they're attributed to making like a fish pond and temples and all these different things. So I'm, so finally, I'm talking to a park ranger, I'm finally at like at the lava flow. I'm in my absolute vacation bliss. I'm like looking at freaking lava flow. I'm like, Oh God, this is incredible. So I go, Oh, there's a park ranger. So I go and I talked to the park ranger. So I'm like, so what do you hear about the people take lava rock and what's going on with that? And she's like, Oh yeah, you can't take the lava rock. She goes, first off, it's against the law. I'm like, okay, well that's, that is understandable. And then she said, but you know, everybody mails it back because they get the curse. There's letters. They write in letters. They basically described the curse they send it back and like, please take this and whatever. So I'm like, okay. So she believed it. So then I'm like, all right, well enough with that one. So what's up with the, the menahuna? And she's like, Oh, well listen they're, they're no joke either because there's happen at the park, like we'll come in the morning and stuff will have gotten done.

P: Like the shoes are all made?

J: No, like like pathways are cleared and the underbrush is cleared, whatever. Like things, things around the park get done and she's like, and no one admits to doing it. So I don't know. I think I wouldn't discount them. She totally believed it. It's cut through the crap. This park ranger went, went to Hawaii and believes all the local legends, which I was actually shocked because I was hoping that she went native.

S: She went native.

J: She got orders from the Bush administration to tell people that.

P: So maybe she had an occupational conflict of interest trying to keep up the excitement about the park.

J: Yeah, I thought that too. But if you were there I think I'm-

P: You looked into her eyes and she was a believer.

J: The tone of her voice and the way she, there was a romanticism behind it. I mean, let's cut through the crap, Perry. She flew from the mainland to go to Hawaii and is sitting literally on a folding chair with a bunch of brochures on it, like telling people about lava rock. She loves this.

S: Well, Jay, thank you for that fascinating report from Hawaii and taking time out of your vacation to do that on the spot investigation.

News Items

Update of the Tomb of Jesus (7:42)

• www.uhl.ac/MariameAndMartha/
  

S: We got some news items this week. Recently we talked with Kenny Fader about the tomb of Jesus. Director Cameron is doing a documentary about this and we complained that he was bypassing the peer review process and basically taking some unvalidated science directly to the public. It didn't take very long for some, the peer review wheels to start grinding away. Already there is a publication calling into question some of the bits of evidence. So again, very quickly that these are the, they're ossuaries bone boxes found in a grave in Jerusalem that dates to about 2000 years ago, to about the right time. The inscriptions on several of the tombs and some of the ossuaries in one tomb were read, they were interpreted as Jesus, son of Joseph, Mary of Magdalene, and Judah, which they thought might have been the son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Well, it turns out, of course James Cameron is claiming this is the tomb of the biblical Jesus. A paper published by Stephen Phan corrects the translation of the name Mary Magdalene and he claims that it reads Mariam and Mara, two separate names. And it was actually very common practice to put multiple individuals into the same ossuary. So as further evidence for this, he shows pretty convincingly that the two names were written by different people at different times. They're written in different handwriting, if you will.

J: As if it happened over different periods of time.

S: Yes, right. Like a hundred years later, this Mara was put in the same bone box and her name was scrawled after Mariam by a different hand. And so we'll have a link to the actual paper. It's actually even for somebody who's, for whom this is not, it's not that technical. A lay person can follow the arguments and it's pretty visual. You could see the script. So of course, if that's true, that completely obliterates the entire tomb of Jesus claim right there.

E: Care to comment, Mr. Cameron?

P: Perhaps I made an honest mistake.

S: Right. Well, I mean, you mean, you mean Cameron? Yeah. Sure. He made an honest mistake. The whole point was before you make a documentary to show to the world you need scientists like Phan looking at the details and going, gee, this translation doesn't quite add up and look at this is a different script.

E: Scientists get in the way of so many good stories, I mean, it's just easier to go around them.

J: He's like halfway through his documentary and he's like, oh, it doesn't say Jesus.

P: They're not going to be convinced by one guy anyway. They don't care.

S: Well, anyway, that didn't take very long.

J: You know what happened. He saw the cash cow.

P: Might not even have been money. He's already richer than Jesus. It's just a matter of he was excited.

E: Drew very high ratings, very high ratings for Discovery. So they cashed in.

P: He thought he had something and that was it. He let it run away with him. He's not a scientist. He doesn't care.

Pluto a Planet well at least in New Mexico (10:52)

• www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72927-0.html?tw=rss.index
  

S: Quick follow up on another news item. We had talked last year about the demotion, if you will, of Pluto from being a planet to being an icy dwarf.

P: Very sad. Very sad.

S: So now we're down to eight planets in the solar system. Pluto is was demoted. Well, the the state of New Mexico recently passed a resolution, House Joint Memorial 54, which basically says that in New Mexico, Pluto is a planet.

J: Oh, come on.

P: Bill Richardson.

R: They've also outlawed gravity.

P: This is all part of his presidential bid, of course, he's going for the planet's rights people.

B: That's a that makes a nice precedent. Yeah, let's redefine scientific terms, just extrapolate that. Why can't they just embrace Pluto's dwarf planet status?

E: Yeah, what's wrong with that?

B: They could have Dwarf Day in New Mexico or something. I mean, Pluto now is in it's in more of a select group. There's only three dwarf planets, but there's eight regular planets. I don't know. They just got to deal with it.

S: Well, I mean, I think the reason that New Mexico is interested in this is because the guy who discovered Pluto is from New Mexico. What was his name?

R: The Observatory guy.

E: Disney. Walt Disney.

R: Percival Lowell.

S: Not Percival Lowell.

P: Percival Pluto?

R: Yeah, Percival Lowell.

S: Percival Lowell did?

R: Yes.

S: I thought he was from Massachusetts.

J: Why would they do this though, really? Why would anyone think that this is an important thing to do?

B: It was a point of pride for them and they want to kind of reclaim that.

R: Percival Lowell was from Massachusetts, he was from Lowell, but his Observatory is in New Mexico.

J: After this whole thing went down with Pluto, I realized it's not a demotion, it's just a classification change, and who really cares?

E: It's science doing what science does.

R: And speaking of the fact that I'm right about who discovered Pluto, Pluto was named Pluto. One of the main reasons why it was so quickly embraced is because-

J: A kid named it, yeah, we know.

R: No, because it's Percival Lowell's initials start the word.

P: Oh, I thought it was based on the old god.

S: Okay, here's the actual facts. The search for the ninth planet was begun by Percival Lowell, and he built an observatory in New Mexico, the Percival Observatory, in 1905. However, Pluto wasn't discovered until after Lowell's death by Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered it in 1930.

P: There you go.

Robot Rights (13:32)

• news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6432307.stm
  

S: Evan, you sent me this next piece, this one is on robot rights.

E: The ethical dilemma of robotics. Very interesting.

S: What does it say?

E: Scientists are already beginning to think seriously about the new ethical problems posed by current developments in robotics. So you know, right there, I'm like, I was thinking to myself, I had no idea there was really an ethical issue with robotics in real science. It always comes up as a theme in science fiction, but I thought it was isolated out there, frankly. I didn't realize there was a true devotion of people out there who really extensively study this.

P: What, they don't want them working all the time? What?

S: No, it's more like when they become really intelligent and self-aware, like should they have the rights of a citizen or a person?

E: Right.

P: They're discussing that now?

S: You're saying it's a little premature.

J: Perry, it's probably the Democrats, right?

P: They feel that robotic sentient is on the, we're on the precipice.

E: Here's a line from the article. As these robots become more intelligent, it will become harder to decide who is responsible if they injure someone. Is the designer to blame? Or the user? Or the robot itself?

J: There cannot be an ethical robotic gap.

P: You are hereby found guilty. You will be unscrewed, repackaged and sent back to your manufacturer. What are they talking about? Whoever set the thing up, whoever was running it, this is crazy. Ridiculous.

J: No, Perry. It's not ridiculous.

S: It does seem a little premature.

J: It might be a little premature.

S: But 20 years, this could be serious.

J: Yeah, why not just start talking about it now and figure out what...

P: 20 years? You think robot sentience is 20 years away? That they're going to be self-aware?

J: Perry, we don't know.

S: There are some people who project that. But let's say it's 50 years.

P: I know! It's stupid! It's not going to be self-aware in 20 years. It's ridiculous. For God's sake.

S: Perry, do you know how powerful computers are going to be in 20 years?

P: Yeah, computers and birds. They're all self-aware.

S: What if... It's actually not as hard as you might think. We'll definitely have the computing power in the 2020s or 2030s. And all you really have to do is figure out some way to model it after a human brain. You don't even have to understand how the brain works. You just need to figure out some way to mirror it. And there you go. Boom! You got self-aware.

J: But guys, let's all answer the question. I want to hear everybody's opinion on this. Let's start with Bob. Bob, what do you think? Computers become conscious in some manner of speaking like humans. Do they get equal rights?

B: I think eventually they will be afforded rights. I think there's going to be a lot of inertia. It's going to be very hard to get to that point and people are going to fight against it. Eventually I think people will acquiesce. It'll be obvious. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, eventually people will realize, well, all right, there's something here. We've got to do something about it. Afford them some rights, whether it's the equivalent of monkey rights or...

J: But don't you think we should have a good hundred years of raw robot slavery before we give them any rights?

B: A few decades, not a century.

J: What do you think, Steve?

S: I don't think that we should make self-replicating, fully automated, self-aware robots. Otherwise, we're just asking for the Matrix.

J: I agree.

S: We're just asking for the robot takeover of human civilization.

P: Have I wandered into a science fiction convention? What are you people talking about?

R: I can't believe I'm on Perry's side on this, but you guys are all freaks.

P: What are you people talking about?

R: We're just asking for the Matrix? We're asking for a dystopian future?

P: Get out!

E: I'm only slightly crazy.

S: All right. Cylons whatever. Pick your... Pick your robot takes over civilization scenario.

J: Evan, what do you think?

E: Oh, I'm not sure what to think about this. I mean, what if someone wants to turn a robot off and the robot has a right to be left on? I mean, if it comes to a point like that...

S: Would that be murder?

E: It seems... Right. Who's going to determine these lines in the sand?

J: We do.

S: There's other scenarios, too. Jay, what about this? What if you have your personality, memories, everything completely uploaded to a computer? Is that computer then you? Does that computer own your property or carry on your legacy?

J: Am I still alive?

S: Well, those are two different scenarios. There's one where you are alive, too. There's one where you're not.

R: Look, unless it's made of meat, I don't care.

J: I like how Isaac Asimov handled the whole thing. I like the three laws of robotics. I think they make sense. I think that humans should come first.

B: Rebecca, I did not think you were meat-centric.

R: I am made of meat. And that's what's important.

P: You guys got this from the Star Trek where Riker tried to prove Data was a toaster, right?

E: Great episode.

P: That's where this is all coming from.

S: But Jay, you're saying you're also drawing a sharp line between people and robots. What about when you have a computer implanted in your brain?

J: Well, whatever incarnation of meat there is...

S: What about when that computer gets more powerful than your brain itself?

J: It boils down to this. Whatever I am, that wins. So if I'm a cyborg...

S: That's right. I think you're right. When people are more computer than meat, then robots will think about that quite differently.

E: How far are we away from something like that?

J: Three, four years.

S: Depends on who you talk to. We actually are in negotiations with Ray Kurzweil, and we will talk about this in a lot of detail when we have him on our show.

R: In negotiations? It sounded like you were about to say we were going to negotiate to have Perry turned into a robot.

S: Well, that basically means we're trying to settle on a date.

J: Ray Kurzweil said, I'll speak to you, but you cannot use the word the.

E: Or ones or zeros.

More Nonsense from the Discovery Institute (19:37)

• www.theness.com/neurologicablog/default.asp?Display=57

S: The last bit of news, just a quick one about more nonsense coming from the Discovery Institute. They're of course the "think tank" that promotes intelligent design. One game that they're playing is that they are collecting names of "scientists" who question Darwinism or question descent from Darwinism or question evolution. It's taken them years to get over 700 names out of the tens of thousands of scientists that there are. Most of the people on their list aren't really biologists or evolutionary biologists. They don't know what they're talking about. Some just have technical degrees, they're like engineers or doctors, but they don't really necessarily have any particular knowledge that would qualify them to make judgements about evolutionary evidence.

R: Some are just fruitcakes.

S: Some are just fruitcakes. But they like to send out press releases saying that the number of scientists who are dissenting from Darwin is growing because they're adding another name to their list, as if implying very deliberately deceptively that the percentage of scientists who are dissenting from Darwin is growing. What that really means is that some jackass signed onto their list, so that list grew. Now, the particular jackass that signed recently, or at least the one that they're trotting out these days, is a neurosurgeon by the name of Michael Egnor.

J: Ignore him.

S: Again, he's Dr. Michael Egnor from the SUNY Stony Brook, State University of New York, who is a neurosurgeon that does not in any way in and of itself qualify him to have an opinion about evolutionary biology. He says the usual nonsensical things. He doesn't have anything new to say. He's just parroting the Discovery Institute intelligent design propaganda. For example, they talk about information theory, show me how genetic information can increase over time. There's no evidence that shows any mechanism by which information can increase over time. In fact, there are thousands of published papers that show mechanisms for increasing genetic information evolutionarily, mainly showing that gene duplication has occurred over evolutionary history, where a gene gets copied, so you have two copies of the gene. That's an increase in information. One of those copies is, you only need one copy, so the other copy is free to evolve in novel directions. He's basically making claims that there is no evidence for this thing, when in fact, if he spent five minutes on the internet, he could have found hundreds or thousands of examples of what he's saying doesn't exist. In fact, you could find examples of it on PubMed, which is an online database of published scientific, biological, and medical journals, and a practising physician should know how to use that. So he really has no excuse to be saying that he didn't know that this evidence was out there. This has been going around the blogosphere recently, and it's just more evidence of just blatant intellectual dishonesty and misdirection from the Discovery Institute.

J: And none of us are shocked.

E: Dr. Egner Amos. Gotcha.

S: Right. Got it. We have to keep an eye out for these guys, the intelligent design fools, because they're not going away. Let's move on to your emails and questions.

Questions and E-mails

ADHD (23:24)

Hello

Recently the Infidel Guy, (www.infidelguy.com/) had an interview with Dr. Fred A. Baughman (www.adhdfraud.com/) about what Dr. Baughman calls the 'Fraud of ADHD'. He claims that there is no 'disease' behind ADHD and the medications should not be prescribed for what are basically normal behaviours.

His basic argument is that ADHD has no physiological manifestation, that is, you can't determine if someone has ADHD by only looking at their physiology, and thus it is not a 'disease' (or even a 'disorder', which he claims is an equivalent term). Dr. Baughman definitely sounds like he has a problem with psychiatry, but if he his right, that might be justified.

You can listen to the episode here:

infidelguy.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=188241#

I've always been a little uncomfortable with the number of cases ADHD, given that the symptoms seem to be little more that disobedient behaviour, however that does not mean there is not a real disorder in some cases.

I was hoping you might be interested in discussing this on the show.

Thanks

Darin Ohashi


Note: Written debate with Dr. Novella on ADHD
www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=35
www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=36

S: The first email comes from Darren Ohashi, didn't give his location, and he writes, "Recently the infidel guy had an interview with Dr. Fred A. Bowman about what Dr. Bowman calls the fraud of ADHD." That's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. "He claims that there is no disease behind ADHD and that the medication should not be prescribed for what are basically normal behaviors. His basic argument is that ADHD has no physiological manifestation. That is, you can't determine if someone has ADHD only by looking at their physiology, and thus it is not a "disease", or even a disorder, which he claims is an equivalent term. Dr. Bowman definitely sounds like he has a problem with psychiatry, but if he's right, that might be justified." So he basically wants to know what we think about Dr. Bowman's attitude towards ADHD and, in fact, other psychiatric illnesses as well. This is a very interesting topic.

P: And around a long time to this debate.

S: Yeah, it has. This is, and I've written about it before, I believe that Dr. Bowman's attitude really is most fairly characterized as mental illness denial or psychiatry denial. I really don't think that his arguments are legitimate. By the way, I want to do a little bit of background check because half the time when you're talking with somebody who is sort of this dedicated against the notion of mental illness, half the time they're Scientologists. Now from what I found out, Dr. Bowman is not a Scientologist, however, he has consulted for front groups of the Church of Scientology, specifically the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, and he has received awards from the Church of Scientology. That doesn't mean, but he's not a Scientologist, that could have been innocent on his part, doesn't necessarily mean that he's in league with them, and doesn't say anything in and of itself about his arguments.

E: Steve, would you accept an award from Scientologists if you were offered one?

S: No, of course not. I think he should be more careful. That's kind of like, if you're an evolutionary biologist and you have some fringe ideas about I wouldn't go accepting awards from the Discovery Institute, you know what I mean? That's kind of what he was doing, but anyway, that's not the point, the point is the arguments that he makes.

R: And he's saying that there's no such thing at all, he's not saying that it's just over prescribed.

S: Right, he's saying it doesn't exist. Every one of his arguments are totally fallacious, and I've been, I've discussed this issue with psychologists, with dozens of people, I've been in email conversations with them far longer than I really should have been, but I really was trying to get down to the bottom of what they think, and to see if I could put them into that sort of logical corner. And you know what, they argue like creationists, they really do. Even worse sometimes, I mean it really is incredible. What they do, the typical thing where you try to focus on one point, and then when you show them logically that the point is not legitimate, they defend it by making another point, they basically lateral over to another point, and then if you address that point, they just lateral over again, just like creationists do, and they never quite really give you closure on the point that you were trying to make. And I've read some interviews with Dr. Bowman so he does make the standard arguments. One argument is that ADHD is diagnosed by checking a list of symptoms. There's 16 different symptoms of ADHD, and if through just observation, a child is shown to have eight of them that qualifies, or nine of them that qualifies them for the diagnosis. In other words, saying the diagnosis is made clinically by observing symptoms. There is no way to make the diagnosis by doing any kind of physiological, anatomical, biological test.

B: Kind of like a headache.

S: So that's that, and he's a neurologist, Dr. Bowman's a child neurologist, so it's really incredible that a practising physician can make that argument, because there are so many diseases and disorders, by the way, those are not the same thing, that we diagnose that way. I think the closest analogy is migraine headache. Migraine headache is diagnosed by checking off a number of symptoms. You have a certain number of symptoms of migraine, it's a migraine. If the MRI scan of your brain, EEG if I sliced up your brain on the autopsy table, nothing would tell me that you have migraine. There's absolutely no way to see it with any kind of physiological test. So therefore, if you use that argument against the existence of ADHD, then you also have to apply it to a lot of other non-controversial, more mundane things, like migraines. It is so clear that migraine exists as a clinical syndrome. People have a very consistent constellation of signs and symptoms. The problem here is that the mental illness deniers are looking at the brain as if it were the liver, and they're trying to say show me the abnormal cells, show me the standard kinds of things that we use to diagnose a disease. The problem is that the brain has something that no other organ in the body has. The brain's function is also dependent upon the pattern of neuronal connections that are made in the brain, and the robustness of connections, and the activity of neurotransmitters, the density of receptors, and the physiology of those receptors. Those are things that we cannot image, and yet the difference between somebody who is brilliant at math and somebody who has absolutely no aptitude at math is in how their brain's wired up in that fashion, and it can't be visualized. There's absolutely no way to visualize it, but that's like saying there's no meaningful difference between math aptitude, between different people, or musical aptitude. Of course there is. Now what ADHD is, ADHD is that it's a disorder of the frontal lobes, and the specific function that is disordered is called executive function. This is what gives us the ability to make plans and judgements about our actions, and so we basically look at the big picture of what we do and the consequences of what we do, and make good judgements for our life. It also gives us the ability to sort of focus our attention on a task for a prolonged period of time, and it varies just like all mental functions vary, and some people just have really bad executive function. Now at some point it becomes so bad that it actually starts to have negative detriments, detriments for your life. You have you don't do as well in school, you have a hard time holding down a job, higher divorce rate, higher rate of use of illicit drugs, higher rate of being arrested and winding up in jail. I mean there's actually very well-documented real consequences to this, and I think at some point it's reasonable to say, all right, these people have, are at the low end of the spectrum in terms of their executive function, and it's causing these problems for their life. It's reasonable to call that a disorder. That's what ADHD is. Now of course there's no analogy with any other organ system in the body, because no other organ system functions like the brain. No other organ system is dependent upon that. So all of the criticism of it, the fact that it's diagnosed the way it is, that there aren't diseased cells or whatever, is completely irrelevant. It's all completely irrelevant. The other thing that that the mental illness and ADHD deniers do is they, and I've had some people that I've argued with for a long time who wouldn't even grant the notion that you can assign terms like healthy or unhealthy to behaviors. They're basically saying that thoughts and behaviors cannot be a disease. That's their mantra. You know, thoughts can't be a disease, which is, again, kind of a non-sequitur. The fact is, thoughts, behaviors, and moods are created by the functioning of our brain, and the hard-wiring and biochemical function of our brain can be dysfunctional. I had one guy I was arguing with who wouldn't even allow the term dysfunctional. You know, it's like you can't, like all function, everything's normal. Everything people do is normal. All function is function. It's all part of the human condition, and we can't assign any kind of healthy or unhealthy judgement on it, and that's that's just nonsense, and it just flies in the face of logic. You know, organs were designed to function within certain parameters. If you're far enough out of those parameters and then it leads to problems, that's something that's reasonable to intervene on it. I try to get out of the semantic argument and just say, just from a practical point of view, if this isn't working and it's causing problems, and I can make it work better and make those problems much less for you, what's the problem with that? I mean, that's a perfect, that's basically the approach with ADHD. Now, very quickly, just to give you the whirlwind tour of the scientific evidence for ADHD, it's pretty clearly a genetic disorder. It's clearly a brain disorder. There's lots of evidence that shows that the parts of the brain that you think should be hypo-functioning or hypo-functioning on fMRI and EEG studies these are like real physiological studies. Of course, when you bring up those kinds of studies, say yes, but you can't use them to make a clinical diagnosis. They're not reliable enough to make a clinical diagnosis, and that is moving the goalpost, because they're saying there's no physiological evidence. You give them physiological evidence that the brain's not functioning well on that part of the brain, and they go, yes, but it doesn't meet this other criteria that I just arbitrarily made up. Say, well, it's not reliable enough to make a clinical diagnosis. Well, yeah, that same is true of migraines. We could look at migraineurs' heads, and yeah, they don't behave quite the same as people who don't have a migraine. If you look at certain reflexes in certain neurotransmitter activity, but it's not really useful clinically as a diagnosis. It's only really in the realm of research at this point in time. Same exact thing, so they pull the old moving the goalpost logical fallacy, too. And it goes much deeper. I mean, there's a lot of depth to this denial, but really it has all of the earmarks of pseudoscientific denial. They use all the same logical fallacies. The core is, though, that they're not applying appropriate criteria to thinking about brain function, basically. So very...

P: That was...

S: It's tough.

P: That was brutal.

S: It's very frustrating to talk to these people. It really is. I mean, I've argued with creationists. I've argued with mental illness deniers, and if anything, they're worse than creationists in my personal experience debating them.

P: I have a little anecdote that our audience might find interesting connected with ADHD. Steve, you remember six or seven years ago, we had, his name escapes me, a big guy in this field come down from Boston to speak to our group in the days of our newsletter, and the newsletter didn't get out on time, and the word of mouth didn't get around, and this poor fellow drove all the way down from Boston to a library in Norwalk, and we had about six people there.

S: Yeah.

P: You remember? That was a real low point for the NESS.

S: Well, it was just, yeah, it was just logistically, it didn't work out. It was also, we did it in the middle of the week, and we didn't know how that was going to work out.

P: Do you remember the guy's name, Steve? I don't... And it was a big bloke. He's a big guy. Well, maybe we can put it in, but how much better would it have been if he had sat in his office in Boston and called us for the podcast?

S: Yeah, actually, I was thinking of trying to get him for an interview. You know, he was a good guy to interview. I have his name somewhere.

P: He is huge in the field.

S: I'd also like to debate these guys, too at some point in time in the future.

P: He's an advocate for ADHD.

S: Yeah, he's a... This is his research field. He does research in ADHD. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the literature, and it was good to listen to him speak. We also had a psychologist on the other side who didn't believe in ADHD. Whenever he brought up a point he could cite chapter and verse, the literature showing that, no, that's true. The evidence shows that it is, in fact a very genetically predetermined disorder.

P: Steve, you had an ongoing debate with that guy for months, with that psychologist, in the newsroom verbally.

S: On the NESS website, there are point-counterpoint articles by him and by me on ADHD. So I'll put the links on the notes page to those as well, and you could sort of see the logic of how it goes.

Nerves Conduct by Sound? (36:114)

Hello, recently I read an article that states that a new theory has formed about how nerves communicate to each other. This theory abandons the idea that nerves use electrical impulses to send messaged between one another, and states that nerves use sound waves to send messages. My question is for Steven Novella(nice name by the way), what are your thoughts on the likely hood of this theory being shown true, and what would the implications be for medicine.

Also, the article states that nerves do not generate heat when the supposedly 'fire' electrical impulses, is that statement accurate? How would this be explained against thermodynamics?

Finally, how would the sound theory explain electrical currents effecting muscle contractions and other nerve functions.

The article is located here: www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/09/science-nervessound-20070309.html

Steven Randolph
St Petersburg, Florida


E-mail from the lead author in response to my questions:

Dear Steve Novella

Typically we communicate with colleagues through scientific articles. The press release of the press department of our University developed a life on its own that I find partially disturbing.

We receive mail from a lot of very strange people - but also some genuine interest.
There is a number of serious international daily journals from Danmark, Brazil and the USA that want to cover the story or already did so.

The press release came out in the States only on Sunday. So it is a bit early to comment on the response. We had letters from some serious colleagues that want explanations and pdfs of the articles. Some of them actually read the original articles. That is the kind of
response that I favor.

Our model makes the easy-to-understand statement that currents through resistors should produce heat. However, a number of very respected colleagues over the past 50 years have noted that there is no net heat released.The first person to point this out was Adrian V. Hill in 1958. He was advisor of Hodgkin in Cambridge and he won the Nobel prize for his heat measurements in 1922. He pointed out that during the action potential a phase of heat release is followed by heat reabsorption. Within the accuracy of the measurement this heat re-uptake is complete. This is typical for mechanical waves or pulses, but not for dissipative phenomena as proposed by Hodgkin and Huxley. Hodgkin himself took this point very seriously and dedicated a whole paragraph to this finding in his textbook on nerves.

Our proposal that nerve pulses are density solitons does not imply, however, that the pulse has no electrical component. Membranes are charged capacitors and we see the pulse as a piezo-electric pulse. Thus, like in Hodgkin-Huxley our pulse consists of a nerve segment of charged capacitor that travels along the axon. In contrast to Hodgkin- Huxley this is based on reversible physics that does not consume energy. The measured currents are capacitive currents instead.

When it comes to EEGs I therefore do not expect any difference.

Further, like Hodgkin-Huxley our model is meant to explain the propagation of pulses in the nerve axon but not the processes within the synapse. Therefore, our model does not make any statements on what happens in the synapse. We do not dispute in our papers the pharmacological evidence for synaptic processes.

Our studies are based on very sound physics published in respected journals. They look at biological systems from a very different perspective - one that is rooted in the laws of thermodynamics. Interestingly, this approach may yield an explanation for the action
of general anesthetics that is extremely simple. This principle is freezing-point depression. Important also: in contrast to existing models it can be proven wrong - this I find an important characteristic of a sober and sound theory. It should make testable
predictions!

When it comes to the response from the science community:A large part of the physics, biophysics and physical chemistry community in my field strongly greets these developments. They find the whole idea attractive and convincing. In contrast to the more molecular-biology based models they find it intuitive and easy to understand. Typically I can easily convince my (interdisciplinary) audiences about the problems with the text-book models and our anesthesia story within 45 minutes. There is a huge interest and desire in the more physical disciplines to understand the underlying biology problems.

Neurobiologists and biologists are typically interested and open to such a proposal. While they typically don't care what the physical origin of these pulses really is, they find it very attractive that one can explain the phenomenon of general anesthesia very easily with
high predictive power.

The community that does not like our approach are ion-channel scientists. Our models do not make any explicit mention of ion channels and don't need them. For obvious reasons this community finds that disturbing. I do not dispute any of the findings in this field. I come from the Max-Planck Institute in Gottingen/Germany where patch-clamp was developed and was a group leader there. I question, however, a number of the interpretations of these findings. I have never ever met a serious scientist who disputed that fact that there is reversible heat in nerve and that this implies reversible physics. Even patch-clamp experts find this convincing (at least those with a basic understanding of thermodynamics).

Like all science our models could of course be wrong or incomplete. Scientific papers always represent the present level of discussion.
Our studies are meant to trigger such a discussion. But to disprove the basic idea would require serious thinking and investigation because the underlying physical argument is quite strong.

I hope that helps.

The original quotes are:

T. Heimburg and A. D. Jackson. 2007. On the action potential as a
propagating density pulse and the role of anesthetics. Biophys. Rev.
Lett. 2: 57-78

T. Heimburg and A. D. Jackson. 2007. The thermodynamics of general
anesthesia. Biophys. J. (May issue)

T. Heimburg and A. D. Jackson. 2005. On soliton propagation in
biomembranes and nerves. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 102: 9790-9795.

Best regards,

T.Heimburg

S: The next email comes from Steven Randolph from St. Petersburg, Florida, and he writes, "Hello, recently I read an article that states that a new theory has formed about how nerves communicate to each other. This theory abandons the idea that nerves use electrical impulses to send messages between one another and states that nerves use sound waves to send messages. My question is for Steven Novella. What are your thoughts on the likelihood of this theory being shown true, and what would the implications be for medicine? Also the article states that nerves do not generate heat when they supposedly fire electrical impulses. Is that statement correct? How would this be explained against thermodynamics? Finally, how would the sound theory explain electrical currents affecting muscle contractions and other nerve functions?" So this is a very interesting article, and I actually emailed the lead author on this article and asked him a series of questions to get his response. I'll have his full email response on the notes page. But basically, this is what he's saying.

P: I'm sorry, Steve, where did the article appear?

S: The article was published in, he sent me the actual, the original references, so the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biophysics review.

P: So it was a peer-reviewed journal, is my question.

S: Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

P: Okay. He took the appropriate steps, he went on the appropriate channels.

S: This is legitimate science, but it's a very very controversial notion. Now he's actually, just to distinguish two things here, and I was confused about this too until I spoke with the guy. There are two types of nerve conduction in brain cells, or nerves, or neurons. Along the, an axon, or along the wire, basically within the same cell, and then across a synapse where it connects to another cell or to a muscle. He's not talking about the synapse, he's actually not talking about the connection between cells, between nerves, or between nerves and muscles. That he still says, yeah, that's electrical signals by neurotransmitters, by chemicals and receptors, et cetera. But he's saying that the conduction along the axon, along the neuron wire, if you will, that the classic, now classic model is that it's a saltatory conduction of electrical current. That current is conducting through this insulated nerve axon, jumping from sort of one node to another. What he's saying is that if that were happening, it should be generating heat, and studies have shown, have failed to find the heat that our theories say should be there. So he is proposing an alternate hypothesis that it's actually sound waves that are propagating down the axon, and then at the end they sort of activate the synapse, which sends the electrical signal. So that explains why you would still see electrical discharges on EEGs and why drugs that affect nerve synapses would still work, et cetera. I actually have talked with some of my colleagues, including Steve Waxman, who's the chairman of my department at Yale and who does this kind of research. And his reaction was there's just too much science behind the old model to abandon it just because there's sort of this one anomaly. Basically, it couldn't make sense out of what this guy was saying. I think what we're seeing here is sort of the clash of two disciplines. Now, the author, the lead author, the lead author is a guy named Heimberg, and he's not a neuroscientist. He's a physicist.

P: Is that the guy you spoke to, Steve?

S: I emailed, yeah.

P: You emailed.

S: He's the lead author on this article. He's not a neuroscientist. He is a physicist, and he's saying that the physics don't make any sense, and he's trying to make sense of it from a physics point of view. Neuroscientists are like, well there's just tons of evidence and research backing up the electrical propagation part of this. In fact, there are sodium channels, and their function is responsible for the conduction along the nerve, and there's just so much that derives from that. There are disorders that we know are disorders of abnormal sodium channels, and they affect nerve function. You can actually clamp the axons, like do these little patch clamps, and measure their electrical activity, and see that they're different. If things are different about them, that should affect the electrical conduction. It's hard to make sense of this mountain of research if Thomas Heimberg's hypothesis is true. It certainly would be a bombshell in the world of neurology if it turns out to be true. I just think that the probability is very small. This kind of thing happens from time to time. Historically, when you have somebody who is looking at one small fact and saying this contradicts a large body of research in another field, that has a very bad track record of being correct. I'm reminded of Lord Kelvin. He did some calculations and figured out that the earth should have cooled much quicker than the geologists were saying. Geologists were saying that the earth was hundreds of millions of years old at the time. Actually, it's even older still. If that's true, the earth should have cooled already, is what Lord Kelvin was saying. Therefore, the earth must be only thousands of years old, and all of geology is wrong, basically. It turns out that this was before the discovery of—

B: Radioactive decay.

S: Radioactive decay. That's right. Once we discovered there were radioactive elements in there, radioactive decay is heating up the earth enough that it's slowing down the cooling of the earth, and that accounts for the discrepancy. Nobody knew that because we hadn't even discovered the radioactive materials at the time. Basically, you have Kelvin taking this one fact that doesn't physically make sense and saying this overrides all of the carefully collected science that the whole field of geology was doing over years. The geologist is like, no way. This can't be wrong. The world has to be old. I get the same kind of vibe off of this, where we have this mountain of evidence saying that this is how nerves conduct electricity. This guy is saying there's this one physical anomaly which doesn't make sense, so I'm going to say that that's all wrong and that it actually functions a completely separate way that doesn't really make any sense based upon our classic model. I give that a very small probability of turning out to be true. I think there's probably some other explanation for why we're not measuring the heat that he thinks that we should be generating.

P: Is this an anomaly that you and your colleagues talked about prior to this article, Steve?

S: No. First I ever heard of it. It may be true that it's something that neuroscientists don't care about, but a physicist notices it. In fact, we may discover something interesting about how nerves function from this. I just don't think it's going to overturn everything we think is going on. You know what I'm saying?

P: It's a little Neil Adams-ish to things like that.

B: I wouldn't quite put it.

S: I wouldn't put it in that category. The guy's being very reasonable. His email is very reasonable.

P: That's good.

S: In fact, he was embarrassed about the press releases. He's like, oh, we don't usually do this, but the damn university went ahead with the press release. We usually talk in more professional sort of venues. He's a little embarrassed, I think. Maybe he's getting more attention for this than he anticipated.

P: He sounds reasonable.

S: Yeah. This is an example of reasonable, peer-reviewed science working out the way it's supposed to, but I just don't think it's going to go the way he thinks.

Name That Logical Fallacy (43:41)

• Logical Fallacies

Hello Skeptical Rogues ,

I discovered your pod cast last September and it is now one of the bright spots in my week. I love the mix of science and skepticism delivered with great banter and humour (Rebecca rocks! I would ask her to marry me if I didn't already have a wonderful wife).

I have a name that logical fallacy for you.

My Dad is a born again Christian. He also doesn't like to go to doctors. He's been on the Atkins diet for a five years. Here are some excerpts from two of our conversations. Although he is laughing and joking in these conversations, he really does believe what he is saying.

Me: What about the studies on the health effects of the Atkins diet?
My Dad: Do those doctors believe in evolution? I don't believe anything anyone who believes in evolution says!

Later,

My Dad: Why should I go to a doctor? Last time I went they just gave me a lot of guff.
Me: Maybe to get your cholesterol checked.
My Dad: I don't believe in cholesterol!
Me: What?
My Dad: The same people that tell you about global warming tell you about cholesterol.
Me: Al Gore tells you about cholesterol?

I think this logical fallacy might be something like 'Argument from Anti-authority'. What do you think?

Lauren Fox
Canada

S: We have another Name That Logical fallacy this week. I'm going to try to make an effort to keep these things coming. This one comes from Lauren Fox in Canada. Lauren writes, "I discovered your podcast last September and it is now one of the bright spots in my week. I love the mix of science and skepticism delivered with great banter and humor." She writes parenthetically, Rebecca rocks. "I would ask her to marry me if I didn't already have a wonderful wife. I have a Name That Logical fallacy for you. My dad is a born-again Christian. He also doesn't like to go to doctors. He's been on the Atkins diet for five years." Well, it's the trifecta, isn't it? "Here are some excerpts from two of our conversations. Although he is laughing and joking in these conversations, he really does believe what he is saying. So here's the conversation, me, me being now Lauren. What about the studies on the health effects of the Atkins diet? My dad, do those doctors believe in evolution? I don't believe anything anyone who believes in evolution says. Later, why should I go to a doctor? Last time I went they just gave me a lot of guff. Me, maybe to get your cholesterol checked. My dad, I don't believe in cholesterol. Me, me, what? My dad, the same people that tell you about global warming tell you about cholesterol. Me, Al Gore tells you about cholesterol." So he basically wants to know what logical fallacy his father is committing.

P: Every single one of them.

S: It might be the argument from anti-authority. Yeah, so this is under the category of an ad hominem. Which basically an ad hominem is the kind of fallacy that is whenever you're saying someone's wrong because of some negative attribute that they have. Whatever that negative attribute is and there are subtypes based upon what the negative attribute is. In this case, he's saying, this is sometimes referred to as poisoning the well or the company that you keep. If you believe in one thing that's wrong, then everything you believe must also be wrong. So you're wrong because you believe in this other thing that I don't agree with and of course that's the logical fallacy because people could certainly be right about some things and wrong about others and it doesn't necessarily follow that you have to be wrong about everything if you're wrong about one thing.

P: That's just ignorant.

S: And basically he's making both of those think of the same one that if doctors believe in evolution then you can't believe anything that they say. And anyone who believes in global warming, you can't believe anything they have to say. If they're also the same people, which I think is also a false premise that the two things I don't think have anything to do with each other. And a false premise is not a logical fallacy. It does make the argument unsound if any piece of it is wrong or invalid. If you have an unsound argument from a false premise combined with a logical fallacy. So good luck dealing with dear old Dadlark.

R: He's going to need it.

P: Better you than me.

J: Yeah. Wow, that guy is out of limits, man. Wait a minute, guys. He actually said, he actually said, I don't believe anything that anyone says if they believe in evolution.

P: Of course.

J: What the hell does that guy believe?

P: Believes we were planted here like geraniums.

Science or Fiction (47:10)

Question #1: Researchers have found they can decrease the hearing damage caused by very loud noises by pre-treating with an anti-epilepsy drug.

Question #2: Scientists have discovered a new species of mammal 125 million years old which they believe to be the long sought after missing link in bat evolution.

Question #3: Scientists have proposed a new process for turning biomass into liquid fuel and they claim that with this method agricultural and forest waste could be turned into enough fuel to meet the US's entire transportation needs.

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fictitious. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake and you can play along. Are you guys ready for the three devious items this week?

J: Yes.

S: All right.

E: Yes.

S: It's gonna be tough morning. This one's gonna be tough. Number one, researchers have found they can decrease the hearing damage caused by very loud noises by pre-treating with an anti-epilepsy drug. Item number two, scientists have discovered a new species of mammal, 125 million years old, which they believe to be the long sought after missing link in bat evolution. Item number three, scientists have proposed a new process for turning biomass into liquid fuel and they claim that with this method, agricultural and forest waste could be turned into enough fuel to meet the US's entire transportation needs. Bob, go first.

Bob's Response

B: Hmm. I'm gonna go with two. I think I would have seen something about the missing link for bats, because that's been a very key argument and a lot of creationist arguments saying that we don't even have any adequate fossil evidence to show the evolution of bats. And that's big news in the bat world. And I think I would have come across that, so I'm gonna go with that. The other ones seem feasible enough.

S: Alrighty, Perry?

Perry's Response

P: I agree with Bob.

S: Okay. Rebecca?

Rebecca's Response

R: Yeah, that article was conspicuously absent from this month's issue of Bat Month, so I'm gonna go with that one.

J: You are so lame.

R: Don't mock my hobbies, Jay.

B: Bats are cool.

Jay's Response

J: Steve, that last one, they could turn agricultural and forest waste into enough gas to fuel the entire American fleet. I remember reading something about it, but I don't remember them saying all of it. A hundred percent.

R: Oh, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Bat Fancy.

S: Bat Fancy Monthly?

R: That's what I meant to say.

B: Okay, Bat Fancy Monthly.

R: This month's issue of Bat Fancy. Sorry, go ahead, Jay.

J: I'll go with the bats.

B: You lemming.

S: Evan?

Evan's Response

E: Boy, I'm in a tough spot here. Either I join everyone or I stand out on my own, all brave and alone.

R: Be an individual. Everybody else is.

E: All right, maybe I will be the individual. I think I'm gonna pay for it though, but I don't think that biomass of forest waste into fuel that just something's not clicking there.

S: Okay.

E: All right, so I'll say it's that one.

Steve Explains Item #1

S: All right, so you all agree that researchers have found they can decrease the hearing damage caused by very loud noises by pre-treating with an anti-epilepsy drug. You all agree that that's science.

J: Yes, absolutely.

R: Yes.

E: I think it is.

S: That one is in fact science.

B: That's pretty cool.

S: It is pretty cool.

B: Because loud noises, that causes nerve damage.

S: Right, exactly.

B: It's a nerve damage.

S: This has been quite a problem with forces in Iraq, for example. Lots of explosive devices going off and the loud explosion causes damage, neuronal hearing damage. So what they did was they looked at, they used rats and they had various groups, some that they would treat with two different anti-epilepsy drugs that they were using, and they would then expose them to a very loud bang or a loud noise and then they would measure their hearing sensitivity afterwards. And one of the groups, one of the drugs, not another one that they tested, if they were pre-treated with this drug, there was a five decibel decrease in their loss of hearing. So that was pretty significant. Five decibels would make a huge difference in the ability to hear speech, for example.

P: My dad has had a hearing loss most of his adult life because dynamite went off near his head when he was a young man working out of construction.

S: If only he had epilepsy. The drug is a calcium channel blocker. The thinking is, you think, well, how can a drug prevent physical damage from the explosion? But what happens is that the sensory overload damages the nerves and then the nerve cells, the hearing nerve cells, and they die. And part of that dying process, the reason why they chose calcium channel blockers is because we know that calcium influx is often part of the process of nerve cells dying. So by blocking that, they thought maybe more of those nerve cells will survive. And that would preserve some of the hearing. And it worked. So it's pretty cool. You know, it's certainly practically difficult. I mean I guess we could give every soldier this drug. But there's-

E: Other side effects?

S: Yeah, there's other side effects and whatnot. It's not, there might not be any immediate applications to this, but it's always interesting.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: And Evan, so you're out on a limb on your own.

E: Yeah.

S: And you're thinking that, number three, that the new process for turning biomass into liquid fuel is fiction. And this is, in fact, science. Sorry, Evan.

P: Sorry.

R: That'll teach you to be individual.

E: I took a chance. Took a chance.

S: It's pretty cool. But what they're saying, what they did was they use, they inject hydrogen into the process. And when they do that, it create, it triples the yield, seeing it three times as much as the other without injecting hydrogen into it. Now, of course, the problem there is that it takes energy to make hydrogen. Hydrogen ain't free. And there's no free hydrogen on the earth. You know, hydrogen is not an energy source. It is an energy medium, but it's not a source. You can store energy in hydrogen. So we would have to if we were burning fuel to make the hydrogen, it really wouldn't work out so well. But if you had nuclear power plants generating hydrogen, and then you're using the hydrogen to make gasoline biofuel from agriculture, the cool thing is that you don't have to do it from fields of crops. You could do it just from agricultural and forest waste.

B: Well, like bear shit?

S: No, like corn husks and things like that. The kind of stuff they would leave rotting in the fields, basically. So with this kind of process, and, of course, if you're using some kind of non-polluting or non-greenhouse gas creating method for creating the hydrogen, like nuclear fuel or whatever, or windmills, then that actually could make a substantial addition to our energy supply or fuel supply. So you definitely, we need some technological breakthroughs. Just making ethanol from corn is not going to make a dent in our fuel needs. We need something else.

B: That's really a dead end. I mean, and they're putting a lot of resources behind it, aren't they?

S: Yeah.

B: And it's really not as viable as it's being made out to be.

S: That's right. It's really close to the edge in terms of whether or not you actually get more energy out of that than what you put in. And even if it, even if you take the most favorable numbers, it's only a little bit extra energy that you get.

B: Right.

S: Part of the problem is that you have to use fossil fuels as fertilizer. So you're pouring that kind of the energy onto the fields in the first place. But anyways, a new innovative processes like this are needed. I don't know if this particular one is going to be the one that's going to work, but it is interesting.

B: We should pour billions of dollars into this. I'm just kidding that time.

J: I saw a TV show that they were using compressed air to power cars.

B: What?

J: Yeah.

E: I heard it. I heard something about it.

S: The air powered car. Yeah. I've read about this. I did some research on this to find out what they were talking about. And there's like an I watched an online show about it. It's like a TV show that it's the online. We never talked about it. But the bottom line is, yeah, it's using compressed air. So you have to put the energy in to compress the air. That's where you're spending your energy.

J: Which could be done with electricity, though.

S: Yeah, right.

J: It's a more efficient way. It's much quicker to refill.

S: And it's actually not quick to refill at all. It takes a lot longer to recompress the air in these vehicles than it does to fill up a gas tank. It takes hours to refuel.

J: Yeah, that's if you had like the wonky one that goes with the car. But if you actually went to a filling station that had a professional thing, it was a lot faster.

S: Yeah, right. That's true.

J: The other thing about compressed air is that when the engine does not produce a lot of heat, hardly any heat at all. So you're not losing anything to heat, which is huge with gasoline.

S: One big problem, though, is that they're loud. They're really loud.

B: That's a problem.

S: Yeah, the engine clanks a lot.

E: That's OK. Just take the epilepsy drug.

S: That's right. So it's an interesting idea using compressed air. But again, it doesn't solve the problem. You still have to create the energy to compress the air. Although there was some reports were saying that...

B: Perpetual motion?

S: Yeah, making sort of perpetual motion claims out of it. That's all nonsense. But yeah, sure, you can spend energy to compress the air and run engines off of that. I don't know, again, if that technology is actually going to be viable. It may find a niche somewhere. But it's interesting. It's an interesting concept.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: But this all means that scientists have discovered a new species of mammal 125 million years old, which they believe to be the long-sought-after missing link in bat evolution is...

E: 125 or 25?

S: 125.

E: I thought you said 25.

S: Nope, I said 125.

J: The whole thing's a sham.

R: It doesn't matter.

S: Is fiction.

E: I would have changed my answer, based on that.

S: I mean, actually, 25 would be less plausible than 125, because bats were around more like 50 to 75 million years ago, is when that sort of missing piece of evolution was taking place. So 125 is a little old for bats. That's one thing that was suspicious about that. But I did pull this off the news service just today. So even if it was about bats, you guys probably wouldn't have heard about it yet, unless you... You certainly wouldn't have appeared yet in Bat Fancy Magazine. But there was a very interesting fossil find that was announced today, documented in the March 15th Journal of Nature. There was a 125 million year old mammal found in China. There's some really rich fossil beds coming out of China these days. And what's interesting about this fossil mammal is that it has its middle ear is intermediary between the inner ear of reptiles and the inner ear of mammals. And all it's very, very well preserved. So it actually does have very significant implications for documenting this transition. It's a very transitional species. It's transitional from reptiles to mammals, and specifically in this one feature of the middle ear.

B: Now it migrated from the jaw, right?

S: Yeah, so that's the theory. Reptiles have a more complex jaw than mammals do. They have some more bones in there that mammals don't have. And it makes their jaw strong, but it also limits the motion. Reptiles can't move their jaw from side to side, so it's not good for grinding. It just moves in the one direction up and down. Mammals, they have a single joint jaw. Their temporal mandibular joint is just a single joint. There's sort of extra bones sitting there that they didn't need anymore. And those bones shrank, and they got co-opted by the ear structure, by the middle ear, to amplify sound by magnifying the movement of the eardrum. And that gives mammals better hearing than reptiles. Very, very interesting. And the evolution of the jaw bones to the middle ear bones, from reptiles to mammals, is actually pretty well-documented in the fossil record. And this is filling in this transition even further, and also is one of the best specimens we have of this. So this is like the discovery recently of tectolic, the transition between fish and terrestrial vertebrates. This is a gap we just filled in.

E: It created two new ones.

B: Yeah, nice going, scientists. Great. More gaps.

S: You know, again, the description sounds like it's a beautiful, well-preserved, transitional species.

J: Steve, do you think that IDers are...

S: No, they don't.

J: Like, damn!

S: Come on, evidence>? Please. They will be untouched by this.

P: They will move the gold posts and move on.

S: The name of this species is Yanoconodon, because it was named after the Yan Mountains, where it was found. So everyone won but Evan.

P: Yay! Now, I have to come clean here. I actually wasn't listening to you, Steve, when you were reading the questions, because I was on Mike's site, stufans.net. I was reading some of the funny quotes from past episodes. I was very happy, I had Bob go first, and I simply agreed with him.

S: All right, so you just went along with the crap.

P: I came clean. I came clean.

S: So you go first next week.

P: I'm an honest man. That's why I will not turn to the dark side, and I will stay a poverty-stricken skeptic my entire life. Thank you.

S: All right.

R: Oh, and speaking of the SGU fansite.

E: Yes?

R: We should promote the fact that there are fansites on MySpace and on Facebook. So if anybody out there has accounts on one of those sites, check out those guys. You can probably do a search for Skeptics Guide. Or there are links from our forum to get to those.

S: Yeah, so check it out.

B: Cool.

S: And thanks again to Mike, and the stufans.net site is coming along nicely. He's really putting a lot of work into it, and it's a lot of fun.

P: It really is.

B: Good work Mike.

P: It really is.

S: As Perry said, one of the things he's doing is going through each episode and pulling out his favorite quotes, and it is kind of fun to read back over some of the funny quotes.

P: It is.

J: It just goes to show you how ridiculous we are. We're just a bunch of idiots.

P: Excuse me.

E: Who can barely operate computers.

Skeptical Puzzle (1:02:11)

This Week's Puzzle

If you take the 9th, the 22nd, the 8th, the 20th, and the 18th, and put them inside a vulva, what do you have?



Last Week's Puzzle

A pirate's victim, swimming in rye, bound with ropes, would make a perfect one of these.

Answer: A crop circle
Winner: Ole Eivind

S: Evan, tell us last week's puzzle.

E: Last week's puzzle was, a pirate's victim swimming in rye bound with ropes would make a perfect one of these. And the answer is a crop circle.

B: Yes, of course.

P: It's not going to be a water circle?

E: Pirate's victim walking the plank, swimming in rye, field of rye, bound with ropes. You tie the plank with ropes, make a perfect circle.

J: That was a good puzzle.

E: Thank you. Congratulations to Ole. I'll pronounce this, I hope, correctly. Eivind, E-I-V-I-N-D, from the message boards, for guessing correctly, being the first one to guess correctly.

S: Good. Well, congratulations. And what's the puzzle for this week?

E: Here's this week's puzzle. If you take the 9th, the 22nd, the 8th, the 20th, and the 18th, and put them inside a vulva, what do you have?

R: Did he say inside a vulva?

S: He did.

E: That's exactly what I said.

R: Just making sure you didn't say vulvo.

S: Volvo. Very interesting.

E: V-U-L-V-A.

S: Okay.

P: Is this the Seinfeld girlfriend that rhymes with the female anatomy?

R/S: Mulva?

E: No.

P: Okay.

E: So, good luck, everyone.

S: All right. Thanks, Evan.

R: I mean, you're asking a bunch of nerds to come up with the answer of something you put inside a vulva, just so we're clear on this.

S: Yeah, that is kind of dangerous.

E: This thread discussion, yeah, this thread discussion will go on to 10 days.

R: You're really stretching to find something that they won't have any direct experience with.

P: Nice.

Quote of the Week ()

“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”- Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World

S: Well, Bob, do you have a quote to thankfully close out the show?

P: Wait. You know, you can't hit a home run to every podcast. Let's just remember that.

E: Make sure you use the word vulva in there.

B: Yes, I do. This is a quote from two people, apparently, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. And she's his wife, isn't that correct?

S: Yeah. And they wrote two books together, so it's probably out of one of them.

B: Okay. That must be it. "Their collective quote is, the cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas."

S: Right. Of course, we never suppress ideas.

R: Shut up, Steve.

E: Stop talking.

R: Sorry, it's late and I'm cranky.

S: All right, everyone. Thanks again for joining me. Always a pleasure.

J: Thank you, Steve.

R: Thanks, Steve.

E: Thanks, Steve. Welcome back, Jay.

S: Welcome back.

J: I'm not happy to be home, but...

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org'. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.

References