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<p>WearSunScreen: removed stray letter</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |categories = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 21<br /> |episodeDate = 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File: LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y <br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = WS: {{w|Wallace Sampson}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-07-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Today is December 7th, 2005. With me today as always are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Good-evening<br /> <br /> S: ... Perry DeAngelis<br /> <br /> P: I'll have to put down my copy of the Psychic Sasquatch to join you, but I shall.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, thanks for the sacrifice. You can get back to it later. And again as always Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Hello everyone<br /> <br /> S: Guys, thanks for joining me tonight.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: So today is December 7th, a day that will live in infamy, right? The Pearl Harbor Day.<br /> <br /> B: That's right.<br /> <br /> E: Pearl Harbor Day<br /> <br /> B: I remember that, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I'll never forget that.<br /> <br /> S: We will remember all of the Americans who lost their lives and limbs on that infamous day in 1941.<br /> <br /> E: Changed the world. Changed the world forever.<br /> <br /> S: When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor<br /> <br /> E: When the Germans bombed &amp;ndash; yes, there's evidence to prove that.<br /> <br /> S: So we have an excellent guest on our show tonight. Wallace Sampson ...<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> S: ... who will be joining us in just a few minutes. <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Intelligent Design Course Withdrawn (1: 13)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> But first there's just a couple of quick news items. First an update on our last show. We had reported that the University of Kansas was planning a course entitled ''Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies''. The course was to be put on by <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirecki Professor Paul Mirecki]. <br /> We discussed the fact that the University, trying to retain some shred of scientific credibility and prestige is trying to do anything to counteract the fact that the Kansas State School Board for a second time is voting to either limit the teaching of evolution or promote the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas public schools.<br /> <br /> Well, unfortunately the course has now been withdrawn by the University of Kansas. The apparent reason for doing this is the fact that Paul Mirecki, again the Professor who was going to run the course, made some indiscreet, anti-religious remarks. Actually, it was in an email to students. And he was slapped on the wrist by the University. He had to formally apologize. He said &quot;I made a mistake in not leading by example in this student organisation email forum the importance of discussing differing view points in a civil and respectful manner,&quot; he said. The Chancellor, <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hemenway Robert Hemenway], <br /> referred to his comments as &quot;repugnant and vile&quot;. Whenever you make any comment that is insensitive, it always seems that the University has to condemn it in the most extreme language they could possibly muster.<br /> <br /> P: Do we have any idea of the nature of the comments?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, lets see. He said he was mocking Christian Fundamentalists.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's pretty broad.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think he called them &amp;ndash; referred to Religious Conservatives as &quot;Fundies&quot;, and said ...<br /> <br /> P: &quot;Fundies&quot;?<br /> <br /> S: ... and said &quot;a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a nice slap in their big fat face.&quot; That's it.<br /> <br /> P: That's pretty horrific. I mean that's really, really (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> S: Obviously he shouldn't of done that. He's a Professor, and ...<br /> <br /> P: I agree<br /> <br /> S: ... he's teaching a controversial course to specifically, to highlight the intellectual superiority of scientific honesty above religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. And he totally muddied it with these unnecessary comments.<br /> <br /> P: It's true. I mean he shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: It's just unfortunate. It's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> P: He shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: Although I have the sense that the University was happy to have an excuse to cancel it and get out of the controversy. They should have stuck to their guns. They should have made him apologize but not pull the course. I don't see why they had to do that.<br /> <br /> E: Right, sounds like, I don't know, an excuse. Maybe they were never too hot on the course to begin with, and it's just a door that opened to allow it to be gone. <br /> <br /> S: It's unfortunate. He should have known that by doing this he was putting himself in the limelight as it were, and he should have really been on his best behavior.<br /> <br /> P: Cancelling the course still seems a little extreme.<br /> <br /> S: I think so. I think it's a little excessive. So we'll keep you updated on this raging culture war. The judge has yet to make a decision in the case. You'll be sure to hear about it on the Skeptics' Guide when a decision comes down regarding the constitutionalilty of requiring teaching intelligent design in Dover Pennsylvania Public schools.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> === Weeping Icons (5: 00)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Another item that came to our attention this week was: there is a new sighting of a weeping Virgin Mary icon. Now Bob, you brought this article to our attention.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I read a little bit about this. As reported in the <br /> [http://www.sacbee.com Sacramento Bee]<br /> there's a humble &amp;ndash; described as a humble Vietnamese Catholic Martyr's Church. There's an outdoor statue of Mary that has become very popular with hundreds and hundreds of visitors coming by, rain or shine, since late November. Apparently there's a red streak running from the corner of her left eye, and that has been causing quite a stir. People have been coming and praying and thinking it's a miracle. <br /> <br /> S: They think she's crying blood?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, essentially, I mean red streak, I mean you've got to think, oh yeah, it must be blood, miraculous bleeding.<br /> <br /> E: Simple, simple test, simple test could...<br /> <br /> B: It says here that the Priest wiped the streak away on November 9th but then it reappeared on November 20th, and many viewed it as tears of blood being shed, of course.<br /> <br /> S: Right<br /> <br /> B: National media attention, many &amp;ndash; lots of crowds, &quot;I believe it's a miracle,&quot; said Florence Chempako. And I was very nicely surprised to see [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] quoted in this article. He said ...<br /> <br /> S: Of course<br /> <br /> B: He says that he wrote &quot;Looking for a miracle and the red streak as a hoax but not without possible value. Such events often can draw believers and non-believers to the church&quot;. Makes a lot of sense.<br /> <br /> E: Huh, huh.<br /> <br /> B: With national media attention and hundreds of people visiting everyday for weeks and weeks, I am sure they've seen a lot of new members.<br /> <br /> S: Even if it turns out to be a hoax, the purpose was served.<br /> <br /> B: Right. It's a win--win. It's a totally win--win situation for them. And it says here that he took issue with the church. He described it as a clumsy, obvious hoax and had issues with the church for not acting quickly to test the substance.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: It says here that he's quoted as saying: &quot;If the statue is a fraud or a hoax, or even just a mistake, it should be determined, and that should be that,&quot; Nickell said. &quot;If it's a fake then it should be repudiated&quot;. And then, Steve, they actually had a quote from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_and_Lorraine_Warren Lorrainne Warren].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, really. They tracked her down.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, a Conneticut investigator of paranormal events for over 50 years admitted to a &quot;believe first&quot; approach. &quot;Until you can disprove it, look at it as real,&quot; Warren said. Which I thought was ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's about right.<br /> <br /> B: ... not surprising but still an interesting perspective.<br /> <br /> S: Now there have been cases similar to this in the past where they did test the blood, and they found it to match the type of blood and in fact DNA match to one of the people in the church or in the home.<br /> <br /> E: Hm.<br /> <br /> S: And the comment was &quot;Well, that just proves how miraculous it is. God can use any blood he wants to create this miracle&quot;.<br /> <br /> E: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Again you can't falsify faith-based beliefs. Which, again, why these kind of things are a win-win. You know the church can never really lose, because the true believers will continue to believe regardless of whatever evidence comes down the pike later. So that was it, that was the only skeptical items that peeked above the radar this week. so we want to leave plenty of time for our guest. So we'll go to him now.<br /> <br /> == Interview with &quot;Wallace Sampson, MD&quot; &lt;small&gt;(8:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: So joining us tonight is Dr. Wallace Sampson. Dr. Sampson is an outspoken critic of unscientific, fringe, and bizarre health claims. He is the editor and chief of the <br /> [http://www.sram.org ''Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine''].<br /> And I, your host, is an associate editor of that journal with Dr. Sampson. He is also on the board of directors of the <br /> [http://www.ncahf.org National Council against Health Fraud],<br /> the author of numerous articles and reviews dealing with a range of issues involving science and medicine. He's an Oncologist by training and is a clinical Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Stanford University. Wallace Sampson, thank you for joining us on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> WS: My pleasure.<br /> <br /> S: So, let's go ahead and just start talking about alternative medicine &amp;ndash; complementary, alternative medicine. Give us your view of what this is all about, what role it's playing in modern health care, and what we as skeptical, concerned citizens should think about it.<br /> <br /> WS: Well taking a somewhat historical view of this gives you some very surprising information. I am old enough that I have seen this thing grow, like weeds under my feet. When I first started in this, there were very few so-called alternatives, and we could keep track of them. We knew who the proponents were, we were &amp;ndash; &quot;we&quot; meaning the people and my colleagues who taught me about this &amp;ndash; were called in as consultants and witnesses in hearings and trials. And we were regarded as experts in this whole field. We held offices, official offices in the states' governments, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and were witnesses for the federal attorneys general, and were held in fairly high regard within the scientific community. It was a little niche of interest for most of us, because we were a combination of PhD &amp;ndash; usually bio-chemists &amp;ndash; and MDs with an interest in Physiology and Biochemistry and Pharmacology. <br /> <br /> === Laetrile &lt;small&gt;(10:38)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: Well, when I first got interested in it, it was over a significant and obviously fraudulent material <br /> [[wikipedia:Laetrile#Laetrile|''laetrile'']], ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that was in the early 1970's.<br /> <br /> S: That was the first issue that drew you into this?<br /> <br /> WS: Right. I was trained as a hematologist and oncologist and was a practicing hemog, as we called ourselves, and had patients disappearing from my practice. A few of them ended up, I found out, in clinics across the border from San Diego in Tijuana getting laetrile.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that interested me, so I looked about and got some literature about it, and I tried to figure out what this stuff really was, and I became very confused, because the material I received had a degree of scientific panache and logic to it. So I really didn't know why it was not approved of ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... because if everything the proponents said was true looked like it might be pretty good. Well, in fact, everything the proponents said was false. Not only was it a misinterpretation of things, they actually made it up in other words it was an intentional fraud.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So just for some background, laetrile is a putative cancer cure that was studied for a time in the late sixties and seventies. Basically found to be completely ineffective &amp;ndash; proven ineffective, discarded by ethical scientific medicine, but has had a life after that in these specialty clinics that offer laetrile and essentially claim that the medical establishment is lying to the public about the effectiveness of laetrile. <br /> <br /> B: Did they find some other use for laetrile, completely unrelated to its original claims, something that &quot;just, oh wow, it happens to have an effect on some unrelated condition,&quot; or am I just misremembering that?<br /> <br /> S: Is there any legitimate medical use for laetrile, even outside the realm of cancer?<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There's a legitimate use as a poison, as a matter of fact.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> WS: It's a well known poison of domestic animals in Africa and in some other countries where these were the compounds in laetrile which come from various plants, including maize, and roots that out of which they make poi, casaba root, and a lot of other staples, because it contains twelve percent cyanide by weight.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But it's all natural, it must be good.<br /> <br /> WS: It's all natural.<br /> <br /> S: All natural poison.<br /> <br /> WS: There's a significant public health problem, because the cattle in Africa are poisoned by it. They get thyroid poisoning, become hypothyroid. They get cyanide chronic poisoning with neurological changes and staggering that looks like mad cow disease, and a host of other problems. But these kinds of effects seem not to bother the proponents, and they didn't, of course, mention them in their ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... advertisements and their claims. It bothered the state officials and the public health officials. Anyway, that's laetrile, and yes, it did develop a life of its own. It made the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Life magazines.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: It was a major scandal, because what it really was was a front for a fraudulent stock swindle on the Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges over which people were sentenced to long prison terms in Canada. And that's another aspect of the story ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... which we don't have to deal with. But, nevertheless, it was recognized that this was never intended to be a real cure for cancer. It's just that some of the proponents began to believe their own stories, ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... their own fairy stories. And a lot of other people fell in behind them so that it turned out to be hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1970s and early eighties for cancer patients. Here in the United States, in addition to what the Tijuana clinics were bringing in. It was legal here for awhile as long as a physician signed an affidavit saying that the person could bring in a certain amount for his own use.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That is now run out, and it's illegal here now. But (unintelligible) started with that, and it was a good model for anyone starting in the field because it has all the characteristics of a pseudo-science and a swindle ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and a con. It is not a simple alternative. It has been falsified from the very beginning, and most of these are false from the beginning, if not intentionally so, then they are unintentionally false from the beginning. And what we are trying to do most recently here, and we'll get into this a little bit, is trying to find evidence that tells us with such certainty that the claims are false and the stuff cannot work and the method can't work. But doing clinical trials on this are unnecessary and a waste and lead to other secondary problems that are unexpected.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So my major interest is to try a case for many of these alternatives in the same way that we finally made the case against laetrile.<br /> <br /> === National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine&lt;small&gt;(16:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. I read a recent article that you wrote called ''The Alternative Universe''. This is on the <br /> [http://quackfiles.blogspot.com ''Quack Files Blogspot'']. <br /> Who runs that site, by the way? It's a good website. You may not be aware of it, but there's a host of scientific, medical articles, medicine articles on there. But, anyway, the article that you wrote was specifically about research, the <br /> [http://nccam.nih.gov National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine],<br /> and why it is a waste to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent to study modalities which we already know don't work. For example, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and a slew of other ones that are still popular and in use these days.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: That's basically what you are talking about, like laetrile's the same thing. We already know it doesn't work, so doing a clinical trial where we're giving it to patients who are sick, is unethical.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There are arguments all up the scale, from the very beginning of plausibility of it. For instance, with laetrile, it was implausible from the biochemical and pharmacological standpoint. It was impossible for it to work, and that's what the experts knew at the time, but no one believed them, except for other biochemists and pharmacologists.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But the general public, the press wouldn't believe them. They couldn't even get quoted in articles in the press, because the experts were simply discarded. So you could start on that end of the scale, the very basic scale, and then you could take a look and say &quot;What else is going on?&quot; Take a look at the way they're being promoted. It's being promoted inappropriately and in the wrong places, and they're not able to back up their claims. That's the next level on the scale. And then you can just skip over anything else in between and get to the most ridiculous part of this, which is what this article that I wrote was about, I think, which is trying to put the burden of proof on the medical, scientific establishment to disprove the use of these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And acupuncture's a very good case in point, because acupunture in traditional Chinese medicine was never used to treat a disease, because the Chinese never described diseases.<br /> <br /> S: Right, that's a modern concept. People don't realize that ...<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. <br /> <br /> S: ... before really the scientific model of medicine, people didn't think in terms of specific patho-physiological diseases. They thought everyone had their own particular illness.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: And usually conceived as being some life force or entity being out of balance.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But not diseases. So, of course, they couldn't frame their concept of how acupuncture might be working in terms of treating some specific biological disease. <br /> <br /> WS: Right. And so few people recognize this. I had to point this out very basically to the California Legislature the year before last, and had a very hard time trying to get the point across. I spent two hours with what's called the [[Little Hoover Commission|&lt;nowiki/&gt;]][[wikipedia:Little_Hoover_Commission|''Little Hoover Commission'']]'' ''here, explaining this. And they were so fascinated by it, it was so new to them, and these were not unintelligent people, very intelligent people, who were assigned by the state legislature in California to come up with a solution to the education of acupuncturists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And they spent more time listening to me than they did listening to anybody else because no one else had ever brought this up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And I brought up all the material I had learned from our buddies, who are associate editors and people we associate with, but I learned a lot from them. The amazing thing was that none of the legislatures had ever come to terms with this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The consultants in the Little Hoover Commission had not. The California Medical Association had no one who had ever given this kind of testimony, and it's so very basic, what you just said, Steve, that's the basis of the objection to acupuncture in the first place. There was no system of science or observation in China, since sixty to eighty percent of the complaints that people have when they go to a doctor or healer are either self-limited or psychogenic, most of them get better with time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Every doctor knows this, and we all know this now, but no one ever put that together with traditional Chinese medicine, because that was the reason that they all became self-deluded.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: They thought that what they were doing was working sixty to eighty percent of the time, and they were impressed with themselves. So they kept doing it, and repeating and repeating the errors.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So that's another level at which you can take a look at this whole situation and try to educate the public about it, which we are trying to do at the present time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: As you work your way up the scale even further, there has been a development in medicine called ''[[evidence-based medicine]]''. Evidenced-based medicine has developed clinical trials, randomized clinical trials to a degree that makes them much more &amp;ndash; when they are done properly they are much more accurate and can much more accurately predict whether something really works or not.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Or one thing works better than another. So evidence-based medicine has developed its own scale of rating various clinical trials to see how well the trial was done. And I won't go into that at the moment, but I think you could imagine how you could look at trial and were the patients randomized, were there blinds, blinding measures appropriate ...<br /> <br /> S: Was the outcome measures appropriate? Right.<br /> <br /> WS: Appropriate observations, appropriate statistics, and all these kinds of things that go into the analysis of a trial. So they've done pretty well with that. However, there are lots of holes, and what they don't have is any kind of a method for detecting fraud, or detecting fabrication. And so someone can make up a trial and publish it, and they have no way of knowing that it's made up. And, indeed, we have discovered some of these, and very few other people have. I must give credit to our crew of Steve and Bruce Lamm and Bob Emory and others who have been looking at these things and been able to detect where the frauds are. And the popular view is that we're not being listened to by University professors, because they have been deluded into thinking that the only way that you can really prove or disprove a method is by a clinical trial, and the only way they can improve is by tightening up the controls, and, still, there will be holes there and they can be defrauded. It's been going on today, and it's been going on for the past twenty years.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Bob, you had a question?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. I was going to say that you said that there were holes, there's no way to detect fraud, but isn't it also one of the other hallmarks of evidence-based medicine is duplication, duplication of the experiments in the trials to see if you come up with similar results. Wouldn't that shed light on the fact if there was fraud or gross errors?<br /> <br /> WS: It should. Ideally it does. There are two ways of tightening further. One is doing larger trials with larger numbers to increase the power of the study. The second is to have it reproduced by another group. But there are a couple of problems with this. Think about how long this would take. You spend say 30,000 dollars to 300,000 dollars doing a clinical trial with forty subjects and forty controls, which would give you an 85 percent power of being certain that your P-value will turn out to be correct. When you get a P-value of .05 or .01, which means chances are only one-in-twenty to one-in-a-hundred it could have been due to chance. Well suppose you made some systematic error in the setting up of the trial that you're unaware of. The first thing to do is for some other outfit to repeat the trial. While in the first place, most research grants are not given for specific repeats of someone else's work. They're mostly giving as grants for looking at in a different way or under different circumstances or for a different disorder. So you start to vary from that ideal repetition because of the way the granting agencies behave. I can only tell you that they think that the returns on the money that they will put into the grant will be much less if it's just for a repeat of something that's already in the literature. So a systematic error, unless it's repeated exactly the same way &amp;ndash; unless its trial is repeated the same way, a systematic error can be repeated, and nobody even knows it's there. That's number one. Number two, it took six months to a year to write up the grant request in the first place. It took another year or two to gather the patients into the trial. Another year or two to observe them &amp;ndash; maybe five years to observe them to see what the results are, and then another year to assimilate the data, write it up, and another six months to a year to get the paper accepted, because it goes through reviews, rejections, and the average rejection rate is two rejections per paper. So already you've got the work that's extended out from the ideal of about a year where you'd like to really know that's when you'd like to know what's really going on to five to maybe ten years before results are even published, and then start the repeats. And suppose you do get some outfit to repeat your work exactly the same way? Well, unless there's someone like our group out there looking for all these systematic errors and looking for something that could be wrong, you're going to have another five years to ten years before you have the answer. Now we're up to fifteen to twenty years. Meantime, these things are being marketed, and they're being talked up on websites and in books and on radio programs on anywhere else, and making their way into medical schools as part of alternative medicine instruction, and so forth, and some of these things get lives of their own, and it may be decades before they're disproved. That's the problem, and not only that, but it takes five or ten of these trials to be able to prove or disprove within some degree of certainty that something works or doesn't work, because each trial then is looking at a slightly different angle.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And just not a true replication. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Now, of course, all of this, (unintelligible) for one second, all of this of course applies to any modality that we care to study, even legitimate scientific plausible modalities. But I think that the key difference is within conventional scientific medicine, practitioners tend to be much more conservative. We don't tend to jump on the bandwagon of one study, but rather wait for a consensus of a few trials to come out, wait for the replication. We take a more skeptical eye towards any new therapeutic claims. It's certainly true that sometimes modalities may become incorporated into our practice, and then later studies contradict or show that it does work, but then we abandoned them. We get rid of the ones that don't work. In the alternative medicine world, there is never, ever a case where an alternative medicine proponent will come to the conclusion that any modality doesn't work. It simply does not exist for them.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. I've never found one either.<br /> <br /> S: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Weil Andrew Weil] has never, ever, ever, condemned any alternative modality as not working.<br /> <br /> E: And the media loves him. Loves him!<br /> <br /> S: Oh they love him. He's the guru of the century. In your article you point out that the National Center after ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars has not proven anything to be ineffective, which is absurd in the scientific medical world.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There have been a few advances. We were making this point up until about a year ago. Within the past year or two there have been some exceptions to that, and one is Andrew Weil has condemned [[wikipedia:Chelation_therapy|chelation therapy]].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, that's good.<br /> <br /> WS: That's one. But that's about it. Of all the hundreds of alternatives ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... that's the only one I know that he won't say works. Or says doesn't work.<br /> <br /> === Echinacea &lt;small&gt;(29:44)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: The second exception is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinacea echinacea], and after the last two trials the [[wikipedia:National_Center_for_Complementary_and_Integrative_Health|National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine]] head has finally made a statement that it shouldn't be used ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... and stopped research on it. However, he got a letter from the industry. I forget which industrial group this was ...<br /> <br /> S: &quot;He&quot; being [https://nccih.nih.gov/about/offices/od/bio.htm Stephen Straus], the head of the National Center.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Right. He got a letter very recently from the supplement industry telling him he was wrong about this and should ...<br /> <br /> S: Recant his ... <br /> <br /> WS: ... reject what he said, because he did exactly that, and he took back what he said, and put in a specific statement saying &quot;More studies are needed.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: More studies.<br /> <br /> WS: Because they didn't use the dose that was recommended. And for reasons like that. That's what the Council on Nutrition had claimed, and they sent a letter to the editor of the New England Journal, also, and our leader, Stephen Straus, of the National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine actually bowed to these people in the industry and withdrew his previous statement saying that echinacea didn't work, and came out with this mealy-mouth statement. Now I might add that my article in the New England Journal that was regarding that last clinical trial, made the point that there was no historical reason that anyone can find to indicate that it should be used in colds and flus.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: In other words, Native Americans had used it for at least thirteen to twenty-one different uses, including an inhalation of its smoke, use of echinacea as a compress, and all sorts of other &amp;ndash; and use as a local application for a painful tooth and a sore throat, but never was their use in a viral type illness or a feverish illness. And all the primary information that we consulted, and I consulted at least fifteen textbooks on this, and also the original text that related what the original Indians had told the traders.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The American and French and Spanish traders. Never was there a claim for that. The claim came from one Swiss and one German homeopath and quack who saw this material. It's a long story and will be published in our journal, but what they did was they got somewhat deluded by one fellows' trip to South Dakota and a talk with a medicine man's son, and came back and made it up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: He actually invented it in Germany, and marketed it as a cold cure.<br /> <br /> S: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> WS: That's how it became popular in the United States. There was no basis for researching it at all!<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: And of course that was completely ignored by the letters to the editor and ignored by National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So this gives you a little idea of what we are up against here.<br /> <br /> === Alternative Medicine Culture &lt;small&gt;(33:11)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Let me back up just a minute because, while I and my colleagues have been dealing with this issue for a long time, for many years, struggling really to find a way in my opinion to really get across to the public, to regulators, to educators, what it is we care about. I think that we get bogged down in terminology like &quot;scientific medicine,&quot; &quot;evidence-based medicine,&quot; et cetera. And the alternative medicine crowd I think have really learned over the years to expertly use terminology to their advantage. They really play that game very well. But honestly, when you break it down, I think what we're talking about is some very basic principles. The first being that medicine should be safe and effective. I think this is sort of a common ground that everyone can agree on. That it's inefficient, unethical, improper to use treatments which either don't work or which are unsafe. Although you'd be amazed at how difficult it is some times to get the alternative medicine people to agree to that. We further believe that over the last hundred, hundred and fifty years we've had some accumulative process of figuring out the best way to know what works and to know what is safe, and that these are really &amp;ndash; again, there's no magic to this. I think people use the term &quot;science&quot; as if it's a magic wand. Basically, all we're talking about is intellectual integrity, fairly accounting for the evidence, using methods which are appropriate and legitimate, using valid logic in assessing claims, using appropriate statistics. That's it! That's all that we're really advocating. There's not really a big ideological or philosophical issue at stake here. It's really just an issue of quality. And when you dig down deep into any of these alternative modalities, what you find is that intellectually, they're extremely lacking. Either they're outright fraud, or they do not account for the evidence, or they are employing grossly invalid logic, or all of the above. Would you agree with the basic assessment?<br /> <br /> WS: Very good! I sure do.<br /> <br /> S: We say not that we're against all alternative or against some kind of artificial category, we think that &quot;medicine is medicine&quot;. There is one medicine, and it should have the best quality possible. You brought up evidenced-based medicine. That is just I think is just the latest iteration of mainstream medicine's dedication to again this sort of excellence and quality in medicine, in health care. But you're right in that it has some holes in it, and I think the big one that we haven't talked about is the fact that it doesn't consider plausibility or prior probability.<br /> <br /> WS: Mmmmm.<br /> <br /> S: So it assess empirical evidence essentially in an intellectual vacuum, as if we don't have a hundred and fifty years of biology and medicine behind us, which I think is just utter folly. Wouldn't you agree with that?<br /> <br /> WS: Well I sure do. We've been bouncing this one back and forth for I think the past four years or five.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And trying to figure out a good way to approach this so that the medical journals would accept what we had to say and not reject it off-hand ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... as offensive as they so often do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The other thing that was sort of implied in what we've been talking about so far, but I think it's worth talking about for a few minutes, is what really is the size and scope of the alternative medicine phenomenon in our culture. Clearly it has risen to higher prominence in society, but my sense is that the public has been led to believe, essentially by a sensationalistic and credulous media, that there is a paradigm shift &amp;ndash; I always hear that term being used &amp;ndash; within scientific medicine, with science itself, and that it is being increasingly accepting of alternative modalities. But I just do not see that. I do not believe that that is the case. What I ...<br /> <br /> P: You hear that about scientific community, not the public?<br /> <br /> S: About both. About both.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: But yes, the claim is absolutely being made about the scientific community. In fact what we see when we survey health-care professionals et cetera &amp;ndash; and, again, I work inside an academic institution, so I can tell you from my direct experience is that ninety-five, ninety-six percent of scientists and health-care professionals think it's bunk. They just don't care about it. It's below their radar. They think it's a cultural pop fad that is not worthy of their time and attention. They may out of some misguided attempt at political correctness they may not condemn it in harsh terms, but they certainly don't think anything of it. There's only about four to five percent of practitioners who are really enamored of and dedicated &amp;ndash; really on ideological and philosophical grounds &amp;ndash; to these spiritual, new-age or anti-scientific or unscientific modalities, and they're the ones who are making all the noise. And they're trying to make it sound like there's a revolution going on inside medicine. It's really a false revolution, but the media is buying it, and they're selling this fiction to the public.<br /> <br /> P: Why? What is the allure of the media? What attracts them to it so powerfully?<br /> <br /> WS: &quot;Man bites dog&quot;. Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news. It's the unusual happening instead of the usual happening.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: That's what makes news.<br /> <br /> S: It's a little also counter-culture and anti-establishment.<br /> <br /> WS: I wish I had begun to tabulate the number of reporters I've talked to over the past ten or twenty years, who admitted to me that they thought that this whole thing was bunk, and yet wrote up their articles as if there's really something there.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> WS: And I wish I could have just tabulated the number, because it just from my memory it's about ninety, ninety-five percent of them.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: What?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's my experience, too, although I will have to say that reporters I think tell you what they think you want to hear as a method of opening you up.<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I don't know if that really reflects their views, or if they're just buttering us up, because they know they're interviewing &quot;the skeptic.&quot; So &quot;Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical, too.&quot; so, &quot;Let me hear it, tell me what you really think.&quot;<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I agree that in general I think I can get a sense when people are BSing me, or if they're genuinely skeptical. If they could really talk the talk. And I've had that experience, too, where you deal with either a producer or a reporter or whatever who appears to be by all accounts fairly skeptical, but they produce a credulous piece. It's usually out of naivety, just unfamiliarity with the topic at hand or because they believe that they're dealing with a &quot;fluff piece&quot;, and therefore they don't have to.<br /> <br /> P: But I'm sure there are a large number of people who author articles that they don't believe in just because they think ...<br /> <br /> S: Sure.<br /> <br /> P: ... they look good in print that it'll please their editors ...<br /> <br /> E: That's their job.<br /> <br /> P: ... et cetera, et cetera. Right. It's their job. I believe that, a lot of them.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. My curiosity is: will the public acceptance of the presence of alternative medicine rise to the point where it will no longer be sensational, or will in fact we run through the cycle where the press will be interested in doing stories about the evils of alternative medicine? I don't know if that cycle is going to occur, but I'm watching and waiting to see if it does.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, it will take a slew of deaths related to alternative medicine that might turn people against it.<br /> <br /> S: Only celebrity deaths will help.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Like the baseball player that died.<br /> <br /> S: You have to kill off famous people, otherwise the public won't care.<br /> <br /> P: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> E: That baseball player that died, what was it, one year ago or two years ago. Ephedrin?<br /> <br /> S: Of [[ephedra]].<br /> <br /> E: Ephedra.<br /> <br /> S: Definitely it was helpful. Although &amp;ndash; and the FDA &amp;ndash; this was the one and only &quot;supplement&quot; that the FDA was able to ban under the ridiculous dietary supplement and health education act of 1994. And in fact there are already calls to have that reversed because the industry is claiming that the FDA, even though it took them six years to compile the evidence that ephedra was unhealthy, was too risky to be marketed, the industry is now claiming that they didn't make their case. Again, they're using the dose issue, that the ...<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... marketing at a lower dose could potentially be safe.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't Peter &amp;ndash; sorry, Steve, I didn't mean to interrupt you.<br /> <br /> S: Go ahead.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't [[Peter Sellers]] and [[wikipedia:Andy_Kaufman|Andy Kauffman]] have [[psychic surgery]]?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: That didn't help them very much.<br /> <br /> WS: They also went for laetrile.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, really.<br /> <br /> WS: Andy Kauffman did. [[Steve McQueen]].<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Down to the border clinics across the border in Mexico. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And Peter Sellers had chelation therapy, in addition to the psychic surgery.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, he did.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. That's right. Now I remember.<br /> <br /> === Chelation Therapy &lt;small&gt;(42:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Chelation therapy, again, it's a legitimate treatment for heavy-metal poisoning, but there is a small subset of dedicated practitioners who are using it to treat &amp;ndash; prevent heart attacks and strokes. Decades of evidence has shown that it doesn't work, and any putative mechanism by which it might work has been proven to be wrong. Again, really within ethical, scientific medicine, it's use for vascular diseases has been discarded. There are just some people who will not be persuaded by the evidence.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. And there's a side issue here which is most important, and very difficult to gather data on this, but the doctors who use chelation are obviously &amp;ndash; I think you have to invent a new term for it, and I call it intellectually with specific intellectual deficit. Intellectually deficient in specific areas. In other words they can function very well maintaining their bank accounts and even repair their cars and may even write glorious novels, but when it comes to this one specific area of chelation for cardiovascular disease, they completely lose their heads. <br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: These people are dangerous, and chelation has been a major reason for physicians having their licenses revoked or suspended ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... over the past thirty, forty years. These are bad doctors.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: The best way the boards could catch them was to catch them giving chelation. Now, unfortunately, there've been some movements in the legal field which have defanged the boards, taken away their ability to prosecute these physicians on the basis of this one action.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And these chelationists, it's practically all they do, so you can't catch them doing other things. You have to catch them ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... from some patient who's died or had a bad complication. The problem is they give so little of the stuff that it can't possibly work, and it doesn't produce any side effects or toxicity in the highly dilute form that's given. So they get off doing it, and the quirks in the law and the quirks in the board policies that have been recently changed are responsible for its continuation, actually.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now ... <br /> <br /> WS: The Doctors, the whole system has been changed around chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> S: That's right. What you are basically talking about is a class of laws called the &quot;health care freedom&quot; laws, basically, and these kinds of things are regulated on a state by state basis. Each state has their own department of health or their health board that regulates licensing health care professionals and physicians and also disciplining them. And, traditionally, a state health board can discipline or even remove the license of a physician if they were practicing sub-standard medical care. The burden of proof was on the state, but if the state could prove through appropriate use of expert witnesses and evidence, et cetera, that a physician was practicing bad medicine, what we call sub-standard care, they could be disciplined. They could have their license taken away. This is a measure of protecting the public from fraudulent or just bad doctors, who are practicing bad medicine. Well, in the legal and cultural milieu that we find ourselves now, under the banner of &quot;health care freedom&quot;, a number of states have passed health care freedom laws, which specifically state &amp;ndash; there's different formulations, but the bottom line is that any practitioner who is practicing &quot;alternative medicine&quot;, which is kind of an artificial category, but something similar to &quot;complementary, alternative medicine&quot; can not be disciplined for practicing sub-standard care. In other words, they are not held to any standard of care.<br /> <br /> E: Freedom to commit fraud, basically.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, absolutely. The state of Florida has this law &amp;ndash; I was involved recently a couple of years ago in a case where there was a neurologist who was practising fraudulent, horribly bad medicine, and it's clear, to me, that he just made up his treatment, just designed to make money out of patients. We proved to a legal certainty, the judge decided that he was indeed practising sub-standard care, but then he appealed on the basis that what he was doing was alternative, and under the Florida statute got off scott-free, and is now free to commit quackery and fraud against patients because of this law. And this whole movement is very closely tied to the whole chelation therapy movement, the freedom for these doctors to prescribe their chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. It is an aspect of this changing paradigm. That concept actually developed in the late nineteen-seventies that predicted the paradigm would change, so that all of these things would then become appropriate therapies has changed, but it's only changed within certain segments, including the legal part of societies. It certainly hasn't changed science, at all.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because, as you said before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: But it has changed the practicalities of it, the practices, and some of the public perception.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So what there is, is an increasing disparity, and increasing disconnect between science, what scientists and scientific practitioners believe and do, and what the law states the regulation of medicine and also what the public thinks is really going on.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: A broadening gap between science and the public is always, always a bad thing. In this arena, we're talking about direct health effects, not some abstract, down-the-road danger of believing in silliness, but some decisions that are made directly and have an immediate impact on people's health. Sometimes even to the point of premature death. We see that all the time, certainly.<br /> <br /> WS: Yup. Another aspect to this has been what I don't think the public has any recognition of this or realization of it, and very few people in the field of medicine recognize what's going on either is that when the claim is made that increasing numbers of people are going for alternative medicine, and it's being more and more accepted, the reaction of physicians is to say &quot;What are we doing wrong?&quot; ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... number one, and number two is to come to an accomodation with it. Instead of opposing it, they say: well, we've done something wrong, it's our fault, and so what can we do? We must get along with the patients who believe in this ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and want to do it, and we must help them, and the interests of their lives and their happiness ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... regardless of how we feel about it, and regardless of our consciences and what our rationality tells us. And you get the same reaction in medical literature among medical editors and journals. An article, for instance, that opposes, that presents information opposing the use of these unscientific methods will usually be rejected. There are very few articles in the literature that have been accepted that propose that physicians reject them as a group or as individuals or that try to work with a patient to discourage them from using these things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That fascinates me.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Fascinates me greatly, as as matter of fact.<br /> <br /> S: It's become politically incorrect.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Which is the enemy of reason, rationality, and science, and basically you're saying that you have some ideology or political concern which trumps evidence, reason, logic, and science. And, again, it has immediate and very severe detrimental effect on the public health.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: To my lay mind the thing that would seem to have the most profound negative impact on these alternative modalities is simply their lack of efficacy, right? If it doesn't work, who's going to use it? Or more to the point, who's going to pay for it? And yet it doesn't seem to have any impact at all, and I guess that's because ...<br /> <br /> B: Human psychology.<br /> <br /> P: ... of placebo, self-limiting disease, and the fact that they're often taking these alternative modalities along with evidence-based medicine, I think.<br /> <br /> WS: Well, that's interesting, because the perception of the patient shifts, but it starts out with this usually deluded or self-deluded recognition that I'm doing this for my cancer, say of the prostate, and I seem to be doing very well (I just got radiation of course, and my PSA level is going down), but I'm on all these supplements, and I intend to stay on the supplements because I want to cover all bases. And eventually I get to believe my PSA keeps going down, it must be the supplements. That's what I'm doing. This is very powerful. And then when the PSA starts to rise again, well the reason must be that I'm taking the wrong supplements, so I'll change. Or I'm not taking enough of it, or I skip too many doses. And that kind of rationalization comes in. The socking in of belief, the power of that belief, is such that people don't make the right decision. They don't make rational decisions ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... based on what they truly have observed. They make the decision based on what they think they would want to have happened.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And what they want to have happened.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And the psychologists have studied this phenomenon for many years, and that's why Steve and I are enthralled with psychology brethren ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... who have laid these things out. And there's book after book that there must be five or ten at least well-written textbooks on this matter that are taught in advanced and upper-division psychology classes, and that we use all the time in our teaching. The psychologists have figure all this stuff out. But even though you can deal with it intellectually, individual patients, when they are faced with these personal problems, fail to recognize that what they even may have learned through a textbook and through a course and lecture, they fail to be able to apply it to themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The bottom line is, and again this is well, well described and very thoroughly understood, is that there is always an almost complete disconnect between what patients, what the public perceives and what's really going on in terms of their illness or their response to treatment. There's a host of psychological mechanisms at work that overwhelm any perception of reality. Scientists know this. We all know this. That's why you need to do carefully designed studies. Studies, when a study is &quot;carefully designed&quot;, what that means is it is designed to eliminate the effect of all of these biases that we know are there. Anecdotal evidence, the reason why anecdotal evidence is pejorative, is because it's not controlling for all of this variety, this host of psychological and biasing factors. Anecdotal evidence is worse than worthless, because it tends to lead one to conclusions they wish to be true. It has almost no relationship to the actual truth. And that's really a critical point of understanding between our position, the scientific and rational position, and alternative medicine proponents, is they just don't get that. They don't want to get that. They're happy to rely on anecdotal evidence because you can prove anything with it, because, again, it leads you happily to whatever conclusions you wish to be true.<br /> <br /> WS: That's so right.<br /> <br /> S: It's critical for us to make that point to the public, that the fact that something seem to work is meaningless. It's absolutely meaningless. I can't tell you how many times people come to me &amp;ndash; and we hear this, too, in all areas of skepticism, &quot;Well how do you explain this? A friend of mine had this disease and he took this bizarre treatment, and he got better. How do you explain that?&quot; Well, that's anecdotal; it can't be explained. But it's worthless as evidence. It just runs totally contrary to basic human psychology, I guess. <br /> <br /> B: And Steve, don't forget, and I'm sure you didn't forget, but also it's worth pointing out that science-based medicine also helps prevent biases on the part not only of the patient but of the experimenter, the scientists themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. Everyone involved needs to be &amp;ndash; there needs to be precautions taken against bias. The observer, the person conducting the trial, the subject, and the analysis of the data at the back end. Any time there is a potential for bias to get into the final analysis of the data, it will be there, so you have to design it in such a way either that it can't influence the results or are averaged out over large numbers of subjects.<br /> <br /> WS: We want to both praise the doing of appropriate randomized clinical trials, while at the same time try to point out the defects.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The things they can't really cover, at least not yet been designed to cover.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But we think that's correctable.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: I'm convinced that bringing in, as you've said, prior probability, which we haven't talked about much, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: ... but that can actually be factored in quantitatively as a choice of numbers ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and plausibility, and factor in considerations for the possibility of fabrication and fraud. We have a list of things to look for that simply haven't been incorporated yet.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: We're all for evidenced-based medicine or for sure tightening it up and recognizing its limitations, as well.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. In fact, again, scientist practitioners consider prior plausibility on a day-to-day basis. <br /> <br /> WS: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We know biology. We know how things work, basically. We know the limitations on our knowledge of how things work, and whenever a new treatment comes down the pike, the instinct of the scientists or the clinician is to think &quot;How could that work?&quot; Does that make any sense given everything else that we think we know about biology and medicine. That's the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience consilience] of medicine. And I think that would solve the problem to a large degree if any claim to knowledge has to be accounted for within the framework of everything that's already been established to whatever degree it has been established. You can't take some new idea in an absolute vacuum as if we don't know anything.<br /> <br /> WS: Sure. As a matter of fact it comes into play the moment you start to make up a clinical trial or apply for a grant.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: Because you can't make up a study of intestinal flu in ants ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and try apply it to humans.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: What on earth are you talking about?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because there is no plausibility there. So it's actually done repeatedly. The problem in alternative medicine is that almost all claims in humans are now plausibile. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Right. They want to change the rules. They want to change the rules.<br /> <br /> WS: They are changing them, that's right. They are changing the rules.<br /> <br /> S: Plausibility is equated to closed mindedness.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They dismiss all of it. You make any kind of assessment of prior probability or plausibility, they interpret that as being close-minded and dismissive.<br /> <br /> WS: Exactly. It's up to us to make the case to bring it in in a convincing way.<br /> <br /> S: Well, it's an uphill battle.<br /> <br /> WS: It sure is.<br /> <br /> S: We'll keep plugging away. Well I hate to say this but our time once again is up. It always goes by so quickly. Dr. Sampson, again, we appreciate having you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thanks for joining us.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> WS: It was my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.<br /> <br /> S: Great! I hope to have you back again in the future. We just barely scratched the surface. There's so much more.<br /> <br /> E: There's so much. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Perry, Evan, Bob &amp;ndash; thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}}<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_21&diff=9615 2015-02-01T05:13:25Z

<p>WearSunScreen: Removed need for proofreading</p> <hr /> <div>m{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |categories = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 21<br /> |episodeDate = 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File: LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y <br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = WS: {{w|Wallace Sampson}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-07-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Today is December 7th, 2005. With me today as always are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Good-evening<br /> <br /> S: ... Perry DeAngelis<br /> <br /> P: I'll have to put down my copy of the Psychic Sasquatch to join you, but I shall.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, thanks for the sacrifice. You can get back to it later. And again as always Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Hello everyone<br /> <br /> S: Guys, thanks for joining me tonight.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: So today is December 7th, a day that will live in infamy, right? The Pearl Harbor Day.<br /> <br /> B: That's right.<br /> <br /> E: Pearl Harbor Day<br /> <br /> B: I remember that, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I'll never forget that.<br /> <br /> S: We will remember all of the Americans who lost their lives and limbs on that infamous day in 1941.<br /> <br /> E: Changed the world. Changed the world forever.<br /> <br /> S: When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor<br /> <br /> E: When the Germans bombed &amp;ndash; yes, there's evidence to prove that.<br /> <br /> S: So we have an excellent guest on our show tonight. Wallace Sampson ...<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> S: ... who will be joining us in just a few minutes. <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Intelligent Design Course Withdrawn (1: 13)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> But first there's just a couple of quick news items. First an update on our last show. We had reported that the University of Kansas was planning a course entitled ''Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies''. The course was to be put on by <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirecki Professor Paul Mirecki]. <br /> We discussed the fact that the University, trying to retain some shred of scientific credibility and prestige is trying to do anything to counteract the fact that the Kansas State School Board for a second time is voting to either limit the teaching of evolution or promote the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas public schools.<br /> <br /> Well, unfortunately the course has now been withdrawn by the University of Kansas. The apparent reason for doing this is the fact that Paul Mirecki, again the Professor who was going to run the course, made some indiscreet, anti-religious remarks. Actually, it was in an email to students. And he was slapped on the wrist by the University. He had to formally apologize. He said &quot;I made a mistake in not leading by example in this student organisation email forum the importance of discussing differing view points in a civil and respectful manner,&quot; he said. The Chancellor, <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hemenway Robert Hemenway], <br /> referred to his comments as &quot;repugnant and vile&quot;. Whenever you make any comment that is insensitive, it always seems that the University has to condemn it in the most extreme language they could possibly muster.<br /> <br /> P: Do we have any idea of the nature of the comments?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, lets see. He said he was mocking Christian Fundamentalists.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's pretty broad.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think he called them &amp;ndash; referred to Religious Conservatives as &quot;Fundies&quot;, and said ...<br /> <br /> P: &quot;Fundies&quot;?<br /> <br /> S: ... and said &quot;a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a nice slap in their big fat face.&quot; That's it.<br /> <br /> P: That's pretty horrific. I mean that's really, really (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> S: Obviously he shouldn't of done that. He's a Professor, and ...<br /> <br /> P: I agree<br /> <br /> S: ... he's teaching a controversial course to specifically, to highlight the intellectual superiority of scientific honesty above religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. And he totally muddied it with these unnecessary comments.<br /> <br /> P: It's true. I mean he shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: It's just unfortunate. It's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> P: He shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: Although I have the sense that the University was happy to have an excuse to cancel it and get out of the controversy. They should have stuck to their guns. They should have made him apologize but not pull the course. I don't see why they had to do that.<br /> <br /> E: Right, sounds like, I don't know, an excuse. Maybe they were never too hot on the course to begin with, and it's just a door that opened to allow it to be gone. <br /> <br /> S: It's unfortunate. He should have known that by doing this he was putting himself in the limelight as it were, and he should have really been on his best behavior.<br /> <br /> P: Cancelling the course still seems a little extreme.<br /> <br /> S: I think so. I think it's a little excessive. So we'll keep you updated on this raging culture war. The judge has yet to make a decision in the case. You'll be sure to hear about it on the Skeptics' Guide when a decision comes down regarding the constitutionalilty of requiring teaching intelligent design in Dover Pennsylvania Public schools.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> === Weeping Icons (5: 00)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Another item that came to our attention this week was: there is a new sighting of a weeping Virgin Mary icon. Now Bob, you brought this article to our attention.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I read a little bit about this. As reported in the <br /> [http://www.sacbee.com Sacramento Bee]<br /> there's a humble &amp;ndash; described as a humble Vietnamese Catholic Martyr's Church. There's an outdoor statue of Mary that has become very popular with hundreds and hundreds of visitors coming by, rain or shine, since late November. Apparently there's a red streak running from the corner of her left eye, and that has been causing quite a stir. People have been coming and praying and thinking it's a miracle. <br /> <br /> S: They think she's crying blood?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, essentially, I mean red streak, I mean you've got to think, oh yeah, it must be blood, miraculous bleeding.<br /> <br /> E: Simple, simple test, simple test could...<br /> <br /> B: It says here that the Priest wiped the streak away on November 9th but then it reappeared on November 20th, and many viewed it as tears of blood being shed, of course.<br /> <br /> S: Right<br /> <br /> B: National media attention, many &amp;ndash; lots of crowds, &quot;I believe it's a miracle,&quot; said Florence Chempako. And I was very nicely surprised to see [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] quoted in this article. He said ...<br /> <br /> S: Of course<br /> <br /> B: He says that he wrote &quot;Looking for a miracle and the red streak as a hoax but not without possible value. Such events often can draw believers and non-believers to the church&quot;. Makes a lot of sense.<br /> <br /> E: Huh, huh.<br /> <br /> B: With national media attention and hundreds of people visiting everyday for weeks and weeks, I am sure they've seen a lot of new members.<br /> <br /> S: Even if it turns out to be a hoax, the purpose was served.<br /> <br /> B: Right. It's a win--win. It's a totally win--win situation for them. And it says here that he took issue with the church. He described it as a clumsy, obvious hoax and had issues with the church for not acting quickly to test the substance.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: It says here that he's quoted as saying: &quot;If the statue is a fraud or a hoax, or even just a mistake, it should be determined, and that should be that,&quot; Nickell said. &quot;If it's a fake then it should be repudiated&quot;. And then, Steve, they actually had a quote from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_and_Lorraine_Warren Lorrainne Warren].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, really. They tracked her down.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, a Conneticut investigator of paranormal events for over 50 years admitted to a &quot;believe first&quot; approach. &quot;Until you can disprove it, look at it as real,&quot; Warren said. Which I thought was ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's about right.<br /> <br /> B: ... not surprising but still an interesting perspective.<br /> <br /> S: Now there have been cases similar to this in the past where they did test the blood, and they found it to match the type of blood and in fact DNA match to one of the people in the church or in the home.<br /> <br /> E: Hm.<br /> <br /> S: And the comment was &quot;Well, that just proves how miraculous it is. God can use any blood he wants to create this miracle&quot;.<br /> <br /> E: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Again you can't falsify faith-based beliefs. Which, again, why these kind of things are a win-win. You know the church can never really lose, because the true believers will continue to believe regardless of whatever evidence comes down the pike later. So that was it, that was the only skeptical items that peeked above the radar this week. so we want to leave plenty of time for our guest. So we'll go to him now.<br /> <br /> == Interview with &quot;Wallace Sampson, MD&quot; &lt;small&gt;(8:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: So joining us tonight is Dr. Wallace Sampson. Dr. Sampson is an outspoken critic of unscientific, fringe, and bizarre health claims. He is the editor and chief of the <br /> [http://www.sram.org ''Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine''].<br /> And I, your host, is an associate editor of that journal with Dr. Sampson. He is also on the board of directors of the <br /> [http://www.ncahf.org National Council against Health Fraud],<br /> the author of numerous articles and reviews dealing with a range of issues involving science and medicine. He's an Oncologist by training and is a clinical Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Stanford University. Wallace Sampson, thank you for joining us on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> WS: My pleasure.<br /> <br /> S: So, let's go ahead and just start talking about alternative medicine &amp;ndash; complementary, alternative medicine. Give us your view of what this is all about, what role it's playing in modern health care, and what we as skeptical, concerned citizens should think about it.<br /> <br /> WS: Well taking a somewhat historical view of this gives you some very surprising information. I am old enough that I have seen this thing grow, like weeds under my feet. When I first started in this, there were very few so-called alternatives, and we could keep track of them. We knew who the proponents were, we were &amp;ndash; &quot;we&quot; meaning the people and my colleagues who taught me about this &amp;ndash; were called in as consultants and witnesses in hearings and trials. And we were regarded as experts in this whole field. We held offices, official offices in the states' governments, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and were witnesses for the federal attorneys general, and were held in fairly high regard within the scientific community. It was a little niche of interest for most of us, because we were a combination of PhD &amp;ndash; usually bio-chemists &amp;ndash; and MDs with an interest in Physiology and Biochemistry and Pharmacology. <br /> <br /> === Laetrile &lt;small&gt;(10:38)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: Well, when I first got interested in it, it was over a significant and obviously fraudulent material <br /> [[wikipedia:Laetrile#Laetrile|''laetrile'']], ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that was in the early 1970's.<br /> <br /> S: That was the first issue that drew you into this?<br /> <br /> WS: Right. I was trained as a hematologist and oncologist and was a practicing hemog, as we called ourselves, and had patients disappearing from my practice. A few of them ended up, I found out, in clinics across the border from San Diego in Tijuana getting laetrile.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that interested me, so I looked about and got some literature about it, and I tried to figure out what this stuff really was, and I became very confused, because the material I received had a degree of scientific panache and logic to it. So I really didn't know why it was not approved of ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... because if everything the proponents said was true looked like it might be pretty good. Well, in fact, everything the proponents said was false. Not only was it a misinterpretation of things, they actually made it up in other words it was an intentional fraud.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So just for some background, laetrile is a putative cancer cure that was studied for a time in the late sixties and seventies. Basically found to be completely ineffective &amp;ndash; proven ineffective, discarded by ethical scientific medicine, but has had a life after that in these specialty clinics that offer laetrile and essentially claim that the medical establishment is lying to the public about the effectiveness of laetrile. <br /> <br /> B: Did they find some other use for laetrile, completely unrelated to its original claims, something that &quot;just, oh wow, it happens to have an effect on some unrelated condition,&quot; or am I just misremembering that?<br /> <br /> S: Is there any legitimate medical use for laetrile, even outside the realm of cancer?<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There's a legitimate use as a poison, as a matter of fact.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> WS: It's a well known poison of domestic animals in Africa and in some other countries where these were the compounds in laetrile which come from various plants, including maize, and roots that out of which they make poi, casaba root, and a lot of other staples, because it contains twelve percent cyanide by weight.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But it's all natural, it must be good.<br /> <br /> WS: It's all natural.<br /> <br /> S: All natural poison.<br /> <br /> WS: There's a significant public health problem, because the cattle in Africa are poisoned by it. They get thyroid poisoning, become hypothyroid. They get cyanide chronic poisoning with neurological changes and staggering that looks like mad cow disease, and a host of other problems. But these kinds of effects seem not to bother the proponents, and they didn't, of course, mention them in their ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... advertisements and their claims. It bothered the state officials and the public health officials. Anyway, that's laetrile, and yes, it did develop a life of its own. It made the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Life magazines.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: It was a major scandal, because what it really was was a front for a fraudulent stock swindle on the Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges over which people were sentenced to long prison terms in Canada. And that's another aspect of the story ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... which we don't have to deal with. But, nevertheless, it was recognized that this was never intended to be a real cure for cancer. It's just that some of the proponents began to believe their own stories, ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... their own fairy stories. And a lot of other people fell in behind them so that it turned out to be hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1970s and early eighties for cancer patients. Here in the United States, in addition to what the Tijuana clinics were bringing in. It was legal here for awhile as long as a physician signed an affidavit saying that the person could bring in a certain amount for his own use.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That is now run out, and it's illegal here now. But (unintelligible) started with that, and it was a good model for anyone starting in the field because it has all the characteristics of a pseudo-science and a swindle ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and a con. It is not a simple alternative. It has been falsified from the very beginning, and most of these are false from the beginning, if not intentionally so, then they are unintentionally false from the beginning. And what we are trying to do most recently here, and we'll get into this a little bit, is trying to find evidence that tells us with such certainty that the claims are false and the stuff cannot work and the method can't work. But doing clinical trials on this are unnecessary and a waste and lead to other secondary problems that are unexpected.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So my major interest is to try a case for many of these alternatives in the same way that we finally made the case against laetrile.<br /> <br /> === National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine&lt;small&gt;(16:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. I read a recent article that you wrote called ''The Alternative Universe''. This is on the <br /> [http://quackfiles.blogspot.com ''Quack Files Blogspot'']. <br /> Who runs that site, by the way? It's a good website. You may not be aware of it, but there's a host of scientific, medical articles, medicine articles on there. But, anyway, the article that you wrote was specifically about research, the <br /> [http://nccam.nih.gov National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine],<br /> and why it is a waste to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent to study modalities which we already know don't work. For example, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and a slew of other ones that are still popular and in use these days.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: That's basically what you are talking about, like laetrile's the same thing. We already know it doesn't work, so doing a clinical trial where we're giving it to patients who are sick, is unethical.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There are arguments all up the scale, from the very beginning of plausibility of it. For instance, with laetrile, it was implausible from the biochemical and pharmacological standpoint. It was impossible for it to work, and that's what the experts knew at the time, but no one believed them, except for other biochemists and pharmacologists.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But the general public, the press wouldn't believe them. They couldn't even get quoted in articles in the press, because the experts were simply discarded. So you could start on that end of the scale, the very basic scale, and then you could take a look and say &quot;What else is going on?&quot; Take a look at the way they're being promoted. It's being promoted inappropriately and in the wrong places, and they're not able to back up their claims. That's the next level on the scale. And then you can just skip over anything else in between and get to the most ridiculous part of this, which is what this article that I wrote was about, I think, which is trying to put the burden of proof on the medical, scientific establishment to disprove the use of these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And acupuncture's a very good case in point, because acupunture in traditional Chinese medicine was never used to treat a disease, because the Chinese never described diseases.<br /> <br /> S: Right, that's a modern concept. People don't realize that ...<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. <br /> <br /> S: ... before really the scientific model of medicine, people didn't think in terms of specific patho-physiological diseases. They thought everyone had their own particular illness.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: And usually conceived as being some life force or entity being out of balance.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But not diseases. So, of course, they couldn't frame their concept of how acupuncture might be working in terms of treating some specific biological disease. <br /> <br /> WS: Right. And so few people recognize this. I had to point this out very basically to the California Legislature the year before last, and had a very hard time trying to get the point across. I spent two hours with what's called the [[Little Hoover Commission|&lt;nowiki/&gt;]][[wikipedia:Little_Hoover_Commission|''Little Hoover Commission'']]'' ''here, explaining this. And they were so fascinated by it, it was so new to them, and these were not unintelligent people, very intelligent people, who were assigned by the state legislature in California to come up with a solution to the education of acupuncturists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And they spent more time listening to me than they did listening to anybody else because no one else had ever brought this up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And I brought up all the material I had learned from our buddies, who are associate editors and people we associate with, but I learned a lot from them. The amazing thing was that none of the legislatures had ever come to terms with this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The consultants in the Little Hoover Commission had not. The California Medical Association had no one who had ever given this kind of testimony, and it's so very basic, what you just said, Steve, that's the basis of the objection to acupuncture in the first place. There was no system of science or observation in China, since sixty to eighty percent of the complaints that people have when they go to a doctor or healer are either self-limited or psychogenic, most of them get better with time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Every doctor knows this, and we all know this now, but no one ever put that together with traditional Chinese medicine, because that was the reason that they all became self-deluded.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: They thought that what they were doing was working sixty to eighty percent of the time, and they were impressed with themselves. So they kept doing it, and repeating and repeating the errors.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So that's another level at which you can take a look at this whole situation and try to educate the public about it, which we are trying to do at the present time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: As you work your way up the scale even further, there has been a development in medicine called ''[[evidence-based medicine]]''. Evidenced-based medicine has developed clinical trials, randomized clinical trials to a degree that makes them much more &amp;ndash; when they are done properly they are much more accurate and can much more accurately predict whether something really works or not.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Or one thing works better than another. So evidence-based medicine has developed its own scale of rating various clinical trials to see how well the trial was done. And I won't go into that at the moment, but I think you could imagine how you could look at trial and were the patients randomized, were there blinds, blinding measures appropriate ...<br /> <br /> S: Was the outcome measures appropriate? Right.<br /> <br /> WS: Appropriate observations, appropriate statistics, and all these kinds of things that go into the analysis of a trial. So they've done pretty well with that. However, there are lots of holes, and what they don't have is any kind of a method for detecting fraud, or detecting fabrication. And so someone can make up a trial and publish it, and they have no way of knowing that it's made up. And, indeed, we have discovered some of these, and very few other people have. I must give credit to our crew of Steve and Bruce Lamm and Bob Emory and others who have been looking at these things and been able to detect where the frauds are. And the popular view is that we're not being listened to by University professors, because they have been deluded into thinking that the only way that you can really prove or disprove a method is by a clinical trial, and the only way they can improve is by tightening up the controls, and, still, there will be holes there and they can be defrauded. It's been going on today, and it's been going on for the past twenty years.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Bob, you had a question?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. I was going to say that you said that there were holes, there's no way to detect fraud, but isn't it also one of the other hallmarks of evidence-based medicine is duplication, duplication of the experiments in the trials to see if you come up with similar results. Wouldn't that shed light on the fact if there was fraud or gross errors?<br /> <br /> WS: It should. Ideally it does. There are two ways of tightening further. One is doing larger trials with larger numbers to increase the power of the study. The second is to have it reproduced by another group. But there are a couple of problems with this. Think about how long this would take. You spend say 30,000 dollars to 300,000 dollars doing a clinical trial with forty subjects and forty controls, which would give you an 85 percent power of being certain that your P-value will turn out to be correct. When you get a P-value of .05 or .01, which means chances are only one-in-twenty to one-in-a-hundred it could have been due to chance. Well suppose you made some systematic error in the setting up of the trial that you're unaware of. The first thing to do is for some other outfit to repeat the trial. While in the first place, most research grants are not given for specific repeats of someone else's work. They're mostly giving as grants for looking at in a different way or under different circumstances or for a different disorder. So you start to vary from that ideal repetition because of the way the granting agencies behave. I can only tell you that they think that the returns on the money that they will put into the grant will be much less if it's just for a repeat of something that's already in the literature. So a systematic error, unless it's repeated exactly the same way &amp;ndash; unless its trial is repeated the same way, a systematic error can be repeated, and nobody even knows it's there. That's number one. Number two, it took six months to a year to write up the grant request in the first place. It took another year or two to gather the patients into the trial. Another year or two to observe them &amp;ndash; maybe five years to observe them to see what the results are, and then another year to assimilate the data, write it up, and another six months to a year to get the paper accepted, because it goes through reviews, rejections, and the average rejection rate is two rejections per paper. So already you've got the work that's extended out from the ideal of about a year where you'd like to really know that's when you'd like to know what's really going on to five to maybe ten years before results are even published, and then start the repeats. And suppose you do get some outfit to repeat your work exactly the same way? Well, unless there's someone like our group out there looking for all these systematic errors and looking for something that could be wrong, you're going to have another five years to ten years before you have the answer. Now we're up to fifteen to twenty years. Meantime, these things are being marketed, and they're being talked up on websites and in books and on radio programs on anywhere else, and making their way into medical schools as part of alternative medicine instruction, and so forth, and some of these things get lives of their own, and it may be decades before they're disproved. That's the problem, and not only that, but it takes five or ten of these trials to be able to prove or disprove within some degree of certainty that something works or doesn't work, because each trial then is looking at a slightly different angle.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And just not a true replication. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Now, of course, all of this, (unintelligible) for one second, all of this of course applies to any modality that we care to study, even legitimate scientific plausible modalities. But I think that the key difference is within conventional scientific medicine, practitioners tend to be much more conservative. We don't tend to jump on the bandwagon of one study, but rather wait for a consensus of a few trials to come out, wait for the replication. We take a more skeptical eye towards any new therapeutic claims. It's certainly true that sometimes modalities may become incorporated into our practice, and then later studies contradict or show that it does work, but then we abandoned them. We get rid of the ones that don't work. In the alternative medicine world, there is never, ever a case where an alternative medicine proponent will come to the conclusion that any modality doesn't work. It simply does not exist for them.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. I've never found one either.<br /> <br /> S: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Weil Andrew Weil] has never, ever, ever, condemned any alternative modality as not working.<br /> <br /> E: And the media loves him. Loves him!<br /> <br /> S: Oh they love him. He's the guru of the century. In your article you point out that the National Center after ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars has not proven anything to be ineffective, which is absurd in the scientific medical world.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There have been a few advances. We were making this point up until about a year ago. Within the past year or two there have been some exceptions to that, and one is Andrew Weil has condemned [[wikipedia:Chelation_therapy|chelation therapy]].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, that's good.<br /> <br /> WS: That's one. But that's about it. Of all the hundreds of alternatives ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... that's the only one I know that he won't say works. Or says doesn't work.<br /> <br /> === Echinacea &lt;small&gt;(29:44)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: The second exception is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinacea echinacea], and after the last two trials the [[wikipedia:National_Center_for_Complementary_and_Integrative_Health|National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine]] head has finally made a statement that it shouldn't be used ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... and stopped research on it. However, he got a letter from the industry. I forget which industrial group this was ...<br /> <br /> S: &quot;He&quot; being [https://nccih.nih.gov/about/offices/od/bio.htm Stephen Straus], the head of the National Center.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Right. He got a letter very recently from the supplement industry telling him he was wrong about this and should ...<br /> <br /> S: Recant his ... <br /> <br /> WS: ... reject what he said, because he did exactly that, and he took back what he said, and put in a specific statement saying &quot;More studies are needed.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: More studies.<br /> <br /> WS: Because they didn't use the dose that was recommended. And for reasons like that. That's what the Council on Nutrition had claimed, and they sent a letter to the editor of the New England Journal, also, and our leader, Stephen Straus, of the National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine actually bowed to these people in the industry and withdrew his previous statement saying that echinacea didn't work, and came out with this mealy-mouth statement. Now I might add that my article in the New England Journal that was regarding that last clinical trial, made the point that there was no historical reason that anyone can find to indicate that it should be used in colds and flus.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: In other words, Native Americans had used it for at least thirteen to twenty-one different uses, including an inhalation of its smoke, use of echinacea as a compress, and all sorts of other &amp;ndash; and use as a local application for a painful tooth and a sore throat, but never was their use in a viral type illness or a feverish illness. And all the primary information that we consulted, and I consulted at least fifteen textbooks on this, and also the original text that related what the original Indians had told the traders.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The American and French and Spanish traders. Never was there a claim for that. The claim came from one Swiss and one German homeopath and quack who saw this material. It's a long story and will be published in our journal, but what they did was they got somewhat deluded by one fellows' trip to South Dakota and a talk with a medicine man's son, and came back and made it up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: He actually invented it in Germany, and marketed it as a cold cure.<br /> <br /> S: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> WS: That's how it became popular in the United States. There was no basis for researching it at all!<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: And of course that was completely ignored by the letters to the editor and ignored by National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So this gives you a little idea of what we are up against here.<br /> <br /> === Alternative Medicine Culture &lt;small&gt;(33:11)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Let me back up just a minute because, while I and my colleagues have been dealing with this issue for a long time, for many years, struggling really to find a way in my opinion to really get across to the public, to regulators, to educators, what it is we care about. I think that we get bogged down in terminology like &quot;scientific medicine,&quot; &quot;evidence-based medicine,&quot; et cetera. And the alternative medicine crowd I think have really learned over the years to expertly use terminology to their advantage. They really play that game very well. But honestly, when you break it down, I think what we're talking about is some very basic principles. The first being that medicine should be safe and effective. I think this is sort of a common ground that everyone can agree on. That it's inefficient, unethical, improper to use treatments which either don't work or which are unsafe. Although you'd be amazed at how difficult it is some times to get the alternative medicine people to agree to that. We further believe that over the last hundred, hundred and fifty years we've had some accumulative process of figuring out the best way to know what works and to know what is safe, and that these are really &amp;ndash; again, there's no magic to this. I think people use the term &quot;science&quot; as if it's a magic wand. Basically, all we're talking about is intellectual integrity, fairly accounting for the evidence, using methods which are appropriate and legitimate, using valid logic in assessing claims, using appropriate statistics. That's it! That's all that we're really advocating. There's not really a big ideological or philosophical issue at stake here. It's really just an issue of quality. And when you dig down deep into any of these alternative modalities, what you find is that intellectually, they're extremely lacking. Either they're outright fraud, or they do not account for the evidence, or they are employing grossly invalid logic, or all of the above. Would you agree with the basic assessment?<br /> <br /> WS: Very good! I sure do.<br /> <br /> S: We say not that we're against all alternative or against some kind of artificial category, we think that &quot;medicine is medicine&quot;. There is one medicine, and it should have the best quality possible. You brought up evidenced-based medicine. That is just I think is just the latest iteration of mainstream medicine's dedication to again this sort of excellence and quality in medicine, in health care. But you're right in that it has some holes in it, and I think the big one that we haven't talked about is the fact that it doesn't consider plausibility or prior probability.<br /> <br /> WS: Mmmmm.<br /> <br /> S: So it assess empirical evidence essentially in an intellectual vacuum, as if we don't have a hundred and fifty years of biology and medicine behind us, which I think is just utter folly. Wouldn't you agree with that?<br /> <br /> WS: Well I sure do. We've been bouncing this one back and forth for I think the past four years or five.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And trying to figure out a good way to approach this so that the medical journals would accept what we had to say and not reject it off-hand ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... as offensive as they so often do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The other thing that was sort of implied in what we've been talking about so far, but I think it's worth talking about for a few minutes, is what really is the size and scope of the alternative medicine phenomenon in our culture. Clearly it has risen to higher prominence in society, but my sense is that the public has been led to believe, essentially by a sensationalistic and credulous media, that there is a paradigm shift &amp;ndash; I always hear that term being used &amp;ndash; within scientific medicine, with science itself, and that it is being increasingly accepting of alternative modalities. But I just do not see that. I do not believe that that is the case. What I ...<br /> <br /> P: You hear that about scientific community, not the public?<br /> <br /> S: About both. About both.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: But yes, the claim is absolutely being made about the scientific community. In fact what we see when we survey health-care professionals et cetera &amp;ndash; and, again, I work inside an academic institution, so I can tell you from my direct experience is that ninety-five, ninety-six percent of scientists and health-care professionals think it's bunk. They just don't care about it. It's below their radar. They think it's a cultural pop fad that is not worthy of their time and attention. They may out of some misguided attempt at political correctness they may not condemn it in harsh terms, but they certainly don't think anything of it. There's only about four to five percent of practitioners who are really enamored of and dedicated &amp;ndash; really on ideological and philosophical grounds &amp;ndash; to these spiritual, new-age or anti-scientific or unscientific modalities, and they're the ones who are making all the noise. And they're trying to make it sound like there's a revolution going on inside medicine. It's really a false revolution, but the media is buying it, and they're selling this fiction to the public.<br /> <br /> P: Why? What is the allure of the media? What attracts them to it so powerfully?<br /> <br /> WS: &quot;Man bites dog&quot;. Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news. It's the unusual happening instead of the usual happening.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: That's what makes news.<br /> <br /> S: It's a little also counter-culture and anti-establishment.<br /> <br /> WS: I wish I had begun to tabulate the number of reporters I've talked to over the past ten or twenty years, who admitted to me that they thought that this whole thing was bunk, and yet wrote up their articles as if there's really something there.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> WS: And I wish I could have just tabulated the number, because it just from my memory it's about ninety, ninety-five percent of them.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: What?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's my experience, too, although I will have to say that reporters I think tell you what they think you want to hear as a method of opening you up.<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I don't know if that really reflects their views, or if they're just buttering us up, because they know they're interviewing &quot;the skeptic.&quot; So &quot;Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical, too.&quot; so, &quot;Let me hear it, tell me what you really think.&quot;<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I agree that in general I think I can get a sense when people are BSing me, or if they're genuinely skeptical. If they could really talk the talk. And I've had that experience, too, where you deal with either a producer or a reporter or whatever who appears to be by all accounts fairly skeptical, but they produce a credulous piece. It's usually out of naivety, just unfamiliarity with the topic at hand or because they believe that they're dealing with a &quot;fluff piece&quot;, and therefore they don't have to.<br /> <br /> P: But I'm sure there are a large number of people who author articles that they don't believe in just because they think ...<br /> <br /> S: Sure.<br /> <br /> P: ... they look good in print that it'll please their editors ...<br /> <br /> E: That's their job.<br /> <br /> P: ... et cetera, et cetera. Right. It's their job. I believe that, a lot of them.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. My curiosity is: will the public acceptance of the presence of alternative medicine rise to the point where it will no longer be sensational, or will in fact we run through the cycle where the press will be interested in doing stories about the evils of alternative medicine? I don't know if that cycle is going to occur, but I'm watching and waiting to see if it does.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, it will take a slew of deaths related to alternative medicine that might turn people against it.<br /> <br /> S: Only celebrity deaths will help.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Like the baseball player that died.<br /> <br /> S: You have to kill off famous people, otherwise the public won't care.<br /> <br /> P: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> E: That baseball player that died, what was it, one year ago or two years ago. Ephedrin?<br /> <br /> S: Of [[ephedra]].<br /> <br /> E: Ephedra.<br /> <br /> S: Definitely it was helpful. Although &amp;ndash; and the FDA &amp;ndash; this was the one and only &quot;supplement&quot; that the FDA was able to ban under the ridiculous dietary supplement and health education act of 1994. And in fact there are already calls to have that reversed because the industry is claiming that the FDA, even though it took them six years to compile the evidence that ephedra was unhealthy, was too risky to be marketed, the industry is now claiming that they didn't make their case. Again, they're using the dose issue, that the ...<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... marketing at a lower dose could potentially be safe.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't Peter &amp;ndash; sorry, Steve, I didn't mean to interrupt you.<br /> <br /> S: Go ahead.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't [[Peter Sellers]] and [[wikipedia:Andy_Kaufman|Andy Kauffman]] have [[psychic surgery]]?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: That didn't help them very much.<br /> <br /> WS: They also went for laetrile.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, really.<br /> <br /> WS: Andy Kauffman did. [[Steve McQueen]].<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Down to the border clinics across the border in Mexico. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And Peter Sellers had chelation therapy, in addition to the psychic surgery.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, he did.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. That's right. Now I remember.<br /> <br /> === Chelation Therapy &lt;small&gt;(42:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Chelation therapy, again, it's a legitimate treatment for heavy-metal poisoning, but there is a small subset of dedicated practitioners who are using it to treat &amp;ndash; prevent heart attacks and strokes. Decades of evidence has shown that it doesn't work, and any putative mechanism by which it might work has been proven to be wrong. Again, really within ethical, scientific medicine, it's use for vascular diseases has been discarded. There are just some people who will not be persuaded by the evidence.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. And there's a side issue here which is most important, and very difficult to gather data on this, but the doctors who use chelation are obviously &amp;ndash; I think you have to invent a new term for it, and I call it intellectually with specific intellectual deficit. Intellectually deficient in specific areas. In other words they can function very well maintaining their bank accounts and even repair their cars and may even write glorious novels, but when it comes to this one specific area of chelation for cardiovascular disease, they completely lose their heads. <br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: These people are dangerous, and chelation has been a major reason for physicians having their licenses revoked or suspended ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... over the past thirty, forty years. These are bad doctors.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: The best way the boards could catch them was to catch them giving chelation. Now, unfortunately, there've been some movements in the legal field which have defanged the boards, taken away their ability to prosecute these physicians on the basis of this one action.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And these chelationists, it's practically all they do, so you can't catch them doing other things. You have to catch them ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... from some patient who's died or had a bad complication. The problem is they give so little of the stuff that it can't possibly work, and it doesn't produce any side effects or toxicity in the highly dilute form that's given. So they get off doing it, and the quirks in the law and the quirks in the board policies that have been recently changed are responsible for its continuation, actually.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now ... <br /> <br /> WS: The Doctors, the whole system has been changed around chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> S: That's right. What you are basically talking about is a class of laws called the &quot;health care freedom&quot; laws, basically, and these kinds of things are regulated on a state by state basis. Each state has their own department of health or their health board that regulates licensing health care professionals and physicians and also disciplining them. And, traditionally, a state health board can discipline or even remove the license of a physician if they were practicing sub-standard medical care. The burden of proof was on the state, but if the state could prove through appropriate use of expert witnesses and evidence, et cetera, that a physician was practicing bad medicine, what we call sub-standard care, they could be disciplined. They could have their license taken away. This is a measure of protecting the public from fraudulent or just bad doctors, who are practicing bad medicine. Well, in the legal and cultural milieu that we find ourselves now, under the banner of &quot;health care freedom&quot;, a number of states have passed health care freedom laws, which specifically state &amp;ndash; there's different formulations, but the bottom line is that any practitioner who is practicing &quot;alternative medicine&quot;, which is kind of an artificial category, but something similar to &quot;complementary, alternative medicine&quot; can not be disciplined for practicing sub-standard care. In other words, they are not held to any standard of care.<br /> <br /> E: Freedom to commit fraud, basically.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, absolutely. The state of Florida has this law &amp;ndash; I was involved recently a couple of years ago in a case where there was a neurologist who was practising fraudulent, horribly bad medicine, and it's clear, to me, that he just made up his treatment, just designed to make money out of patients. We proved to a legal certainty, the judge decided that he was indeed practising sub-standard care, but then he appealed on the basis that what he was doing was alternative, and under the Florida statute got off scott-free, and is now free to commit quackery and fraud against patients because of this law. And this whole movement is very closely tied to the whole chelation therapy movement, the freedom for these doctors to prescribe their chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. It is an aspect of this changing paradigm. That concept actually developed in the late nineteen-seventies that predicted the paradigm would change, so that all of these things would then become appropriate therapies has changed, but it's only changed within certain segments, including the legal part of societies. It certainly hasn't changed science, at all.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because, as you said before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: But it has changed the practicalities of it, the practices, and some of the public perception.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So what there is, is an increasing disparity, and increasing disconnect between science, what scientists and scientific practitioners believe and do, and what the law states the regulation of medicine and also what the public thinks is really going on.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: A broadening gap between science and the public is always, always a bad thing. In this arena, we're talking about direct health effects, not some abstract, down-the-road danger of believing in silliness, but some decisions that are made directly and have an immediate impact on people's health. Sometimes even to the point of premature death. We see that all the time, certainly.<br /> <br /> WS: Yup. Another aspect to this has been what I don't think the public has any recognition of this or realization of it, and very few people in the field of medicine recognize what's going on either is that when the claim is made that increasing numbers of people are going for alternative medicine, and it's being more and more accepted, the reaction of physicians is to say &quot;What are we doing wrong?&quot; ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... number one, and number two is to come to an accomodation with it. Instead of opposing it, they say: well, we've done something wrong, it's our fault, and so what can we do? We must get along with the patients who believe in this ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and want to do it, and we must help them, and the interests of their lives and their happiness ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... regardless of how we feel about it, and regardless of our consciences and what our rationality tells us. And you get the same reaction in medical literature among medical editors and journals. An article, for instance, that opposes, that presents information opposing the use of these unscientific methods will usually be rejected. There are very few articles in the literature that have been accepted that propose that physicians reject them as a group or as individuals or that try to work with a patient to discourage them from using these things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That fascinates me.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Fascinates me greatly, as as matter of fact.<br /> <br /> S: It's become politically incorrect.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Which is the enemy of reason, rationality, and science, and basically you're saying that you have some ideology or political concern which trumps evidence, reason, logic, and science. And, again, it has immediate and very severe detrimental effect on the public health.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: To my lay mind the thing that would seem to have the most profound negative impact on these alternative modalities is simply their lack of efficacy, right? If it doesn't work, who's going to use it? Or more to the point, who's going to pay for it? And yet it doesn't seem to have any impact at all, and I guess that's because ...<br /> <br /> B: Human psychology.<br /> <br /> P: ... of placebo, self-limiting disease, and the fact that they're often taking these alternative modalities along with evidence-based medicine, I think.<br /> <br /> WS: Well, that's interesting, because the perception of the patient shifts, but it starts out with this usually deluded or self-deluded recognition that I'm doing this for my cancer, say of the prostate, and I seem to be doing very well (I just got radiation of course, and my PSA level is going down), but I'm on all these supplements, and I intend to stay on the supplements because I want to cover all bases. And eventually I get to believe my PSA keeps going down, it must be the supplements. That's what I'm doing. This is very powerful. And then when the PSA starts to rise again, well the reason must be that I'm taking the wrong supplements, so I'll change. Or I'm not taking enough of it, or I skip too many doses. And that kind of rationalization comes in. The socking in of belief, the power of that belief, is such that people don't make the right decision. They don't make rational decisions ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... based on what they truly have observed. They make the decision based on what they think they would want to have happened.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And what they want to have happened.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And the psychologists have studied this phenomenon for many years, and that's why Steve and I are enthralled with psychology brethren ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... who have laid these things out. And there's book after book that there must be five or ten at least well-written textbooks on this matter that are taught in advanced and upper-division psychology classes, and that we use all the time in our teaching. The psychologists have figure all this stuff out. But even though you can deal with it intellectually, individual patients, when they are faced with these personal problems, fail to recognize that what they even may have learned through a textbook and through a course and lecture, they fail to be able to apply it to themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The bottom line is, and again this is well, well described and very thoroughly understood, is that there is always an almost complete disconnect between what patients, what the public perceives and what's really going on in terms of their illness or their response to treatment. There's a host of psychological mechanisms at work that overwhelm any perception of reality. Scientists know this. We all know this. That's why you need to do carefully designed studies. Studies, when a study is &quot;carefully designed&quot;, what that means is it is designed to eliminate the effect of all of these biases that we know are there. Anecdotal evidence, the reason why anecdotal evidence is pejorative, is because it's not controlling for all of this variety, this host of psychological and biasing factors. Anecdotal evidence is worse than worthless, because it tends to lead one to conclusions they wish to be true. It has almost no relationship to the actual truth. And that's really a critical point of understanding between our position, the scientific and rational position, and alternative medicine proponents, is they just don't get that. They don't want to get that. They're happy to rely on anecdotal evidence because you can prove anything with it, because, again, it leads you happily to whatever conclusions you wish to be true.<br /> <br /> WS: That's so right.<br /> <br /> S: It's critical for us to make that point to the public, that the fact that something seem to work is meaningless. It's absolutely meaningless. I can't tell you how many times people come to me &amp;ndash; and we hear this, too, in all areas of skepticism, &quot;Well how do you explain this? A friend of mine had this disease and he took this bizarre treatment, and he got better. How do you explain that?&quot; Well, that's anecdotal; it can't be explained. But it's worthless as evidence. It just runs totally contrary to basic human psychology, I guess. <br /> <br /> B: And Steve, don't forget, and I'm sure you didn't forget, but also it's worth pointing out that science-based medicine also helps prevent biases on the part not only of the patient but of the experimenter, the scientists themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. Everyone involved needs to be &amp;ndash; there needs to be precautions taken against bias. The observer, the person conducting the trial, the subject, and the analysis of the data at the back end. Any time there is a potential for bias to get into the final analysis of the data, it will be there, so you have to design it in such a way either that it can't influence the results or are averaged out over large numbers of subjects.<br /> <br /> WS: We want to both praise the doing of appropriate randomized clinical trials, while at the same time try to point out the defects.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The things they can't really cover, at least not yet been designed to cover.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But we think that's correctable.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: I'm convinced that bringing in, as you've said, prior probability, which we haven't talked about much, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: ... but that can actually be factored in quantitatively as a choice of numbers ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and plausibility, and factor in considerations for the possibility of fabrication and fraud. We have a list of things to look for that simply haven't been incorporated yet.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: We're all for evidenced-based medicine or for sure tightening it up and recognizing its limitations, as well.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. In fact, again, scientist practitioners consider prior plausibility on a day-to-day basis. <br /> <br /> WS: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We know biology. We know how things work, basically. We know the limitations on our knowledge of how things work, and whenever a new treatment comes down the pike, the instinct of the scientists or the clinician is to think &quot;How could that work?&quot; Does that make any sense given everything else that we think we know about biology and medicine. That's the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience consilience] of medicine. And I think that would solve the problem to a large degree if any claim to knowledge has to be accounted for within the framework of everything that's already been established to whatever degree it has been established. You can't take some new idea in an absolute vacuum as if we don't know anything.<br /> <br /> WS: Sure. As a matter of fact it comes into play the moment you start to make up a clinical trial or apply for a grant.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: Because you can't make up a study of intestinal flu in ants ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and try apply it to humans.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: What on earth are you talking about?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because there is no plausibility there. So it's actually done repeatedly. The problem in alternative medicine is that almost all claims in humans are now plausibile. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Right. They want to change the rules. They want to change the rules.<br /> <br /> WS: They are changing them, that's right. They are changing the rules.<br /> <br /> S: Plausibility is equated to closed mindedness.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They dismiss all of it. You make any kind of assessment of prior probability or plausibility, they interpret that as being close-minded and dismissive.<br /> <br /> WS: Exactly. It's up to us to make the case to bring it in in a convincing way.<br /> <br /> S: Well, it's an uphill battle.<br /> <br /> WS: It sure is.<br /> <br /> S: We'll keep plugging away. Well I hate to say this but our time once again is up. It always goes by so quickly. Dr. Sampson, again, we appreciate having you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thanks for joining us.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> WS: It was my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.<br /> <br /> S: Great! I hope to have you back again in the future. We just barely scratched the surface. There's so much more.<br /> <br /> E: There's so much. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Perry, Evan, Bob &amp;ndash; thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}}<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_21&diff=9614 2015-02-01T05:12:37Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Chelation Therapy (42:50) */ Spelling and links</p> <hr /> <div>m{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |categories = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 21<br /> |episodeDate = 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File: LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y <br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = WS: {{w|Wallace Sampson}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-07-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Today is December 7th, 2005. With me today as always are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Good-evening<br /> <br /> S: ... Perry DeAngelis<br /> <br /> P: I'll have to put down my copy of the Psychic Sasquatch to join you, but I shall.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, thanks for the sacrifice. You can get back to it later. And again as always Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Hello everyone<br /> <br /> S: Guys, thanks for joining me tonight.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: So today is December 7th, a day that will live in infamy, right? The Pearl Harbor Day.<br /> <br /> B: That's right.<br /> <br /> E: Pearl Harbor Day<br /> <br /> B: I remember that, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I'll never forget that.<br /> <br /> S: We will remember all of the Americans who lost their lives and limbs on that infamous day in 1941.<br /> <br /> E: Changed the world. Changed the world forever.<br /> <br /> S: When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor<br /> <br /> E: When the Germans bombed &amp;ndash; yes, there's evidence to prove that.<br /> <br /> S: So we have an excellent guest on our show tonight. Wallace Sampson ...<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> S: ... who will be joining us in just a few minutes. <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Intelligent Design Course Withdrawn (1: 13)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> But first there's just a couple of quick news items. First an update on our last show. We had reported that the University of Kansas was planning a course entitled ''Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies''. The course was to be put on by <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirecki Professor Paul Mirecki]. <br /> We discussed the fact that the University, trying to retain some shred of scientific credibility and prestige is trying to do anything to counteract the fact that the Kansas State School Board for a second time is voting to either limit the teaching of evolution or promote the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas public schools.<br /> <br /> Well, unfortunately the course has now been withdrawn by the University of Kansas. The apparent reason for doing this is the fact that Paul Mirecki, again the Professor who was going to run the course, made some indiscreet, anti-religious remarks. Actually, it was in an email to students. And he was slapped on the wrist by the University. He had to formally apologize. He said &quot;I made a mistake in not leading by example in this student organisation email forum the importance of discussing differing view points in a civil and respectful manner,&quot; he said. The Chancellor, <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hemenway Robert Hemenway], <br /> referred to his comments as &quot;repugnant and vile&quot;. Whenever you make any comment that is insensitive, it always seems that the University has to condemn it in the most extreme language they could possibly muster.<br /> <br /> P: Do we have any idea of the nature of the comments?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, lets see. He said he was mocking Christian Fundamentalists.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's pretty broad.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think he called them &amp;ndash; referred to Religious Conservatives as &quot;Fundies&quot;, and said ...<br /> <br /> P: &quot;Fundies&quot;?<br /> <br /> S: ... and said &quot;a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a nice slap in their big fat face.&quot; That's it.<br /> <br /> P: That's pretty horrific. I mean that's really, really (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> S: Obviously he shouldn't of done that. He's a Professor, and ...<br /> <br /> P: I agree<br /> <br /> S: ... he's teaching a controversial course to specifically, to highlight the intellectual superiority of scientific honesty above religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. And he totally muddied it with these unnecessary comments.<br /> <br /> P: It's true. I mean he shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: It's just unfortunate. It's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> P: He shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: Although I have the sense that the University was happy to have an excuse to cancel it and get out of the controversy. They should have stuck to their guns. They should have made him apologize but not pull the course. I don't see why they had to do that.<br /> <br /> E: Right, sounds like, I don't know, an excuse. Maybe they were never too hot on the course to begin with, and it's just a door that opened to allow it to be gone. <br /> <br /> S: It's unfortunate. He should have known that by doing this he was putting himself in the limelight as it were, and he should have really been on his best behavior.<br /> <br /> P: Cancelling the course still seems a little extreme.<br /> <br /> S: I think so. I think it's a little excessive. So we'll keep you updated on this raging culture war. The judge has yet to make a decision in the case. You'll be sure to hear about it on the Skeptics' Guide when a decision comes down regarding the constitutionalilty of requiring teaching intelligent design in Dover Pennsylvania Public schools.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> === Weeping Icons (5: 00)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Another item that came to our attention this week was: there is a new sighting of a weeping Virgin Mary icon. Now Bob, you brought this article to our attention.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I read a little bit about this. As reported in the <br /> [http://www.sacbee.com Sacramento Bee]<br /> there's a humble &amp;ndash; described as a humble Vietnamese Catholic Martyr's Church. There's an outdoor statue of Mary that has become very popular with hundreds and hundreds of visitors coming by, rain or shine, since late November. Apparently there's a red streak running from the corner of her left eye, and that has been causing quite a stir. People have been coming and praying and thinking it's a miracle. <br /> <br /> S: They think she's crying blood?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, essentially, I mean red streak, I mean you've got to think, oh yeah, it must be blood, miraculous bleeding.<br /> <br /> E: Simple, simple test, simple test could...<br /> <br /> B: It says here that the Priest wiped the streak away on November 9th but then it reappeared on November 20th, and many viewed it as tears of blood being shed, of course.<br /> <br /> S: Right<br /> <br /> B: National media attention, many &amp;ndash; lots of crowds, &quot;I believe it's a miracle,&quot; said Florence Chempako. And I was very nicely surprised to see [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] quoted in this article. He said ...<br /> <br /> S: Of course<br /> <br /> B: He says that he wrote &quot;Looking for a miracle and the red streak as a hoax but not without possible value. Such events often can draw believers and non-believers to the church&quot;. Makes a lot of sense.<br /> <br /> E: Huh, huh.<br /> <br /> B: With national media attention and hundreds of people visiting everyday for weeks and weeks, I am sure they've seen a lot of new members.<br /> <br /> S: Even if it turns out to be a hoax, the purpose was served.<br /> <br /> B: Right. It's a win--win. It's a totally win--win situation for them. And it says here that he took issue with the church. He described it as a clumsy, obvious hoax and had issues with the church for not acting quickly to test the substance.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: It says here that he's quoted as saying: &quot;If the statue is a fraud or a hoax, or even just a mistake, it should be determined, and that should be that,&quot; Nickell said. &quot;If it's a fake then it should be repudiated&quot;. And then, Steve, they actually had a quote from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_and_Lorraine_Warren Lorrainne Warren].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, really. They tracked her down.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, a Conneticut investigator of paranormal events for over 50 years admitted to a &quot;believe first&quot; approach. &quot;Until you can disprove it, look at it as real,&quot; Warren said. Which I thought was ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's about right.<br /> <br /> B: ... not surprising but still an interesting perspective.<br /> <br /> S: Now there have been cases similar to this in the past where they did test the blood, and they found it to match the type of blood and in fact DNA match to one of the people in the church or in the home.<br /> <br /> E: Hm.<br /> <br /> S: And the comment was &quot;Well, that just proves how miraculous it is. God can use any blood he wants to create this miracle&quot;.<br /> <br /> E: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Again you can't falsify faith-based beliefs. Which, again, why these kind of things are a win-win. You know the church can never really lose, because the true believers will continue to believe regardless of whatever evidence comes down the pike later. So that was it, that was the only skeptical items that peeked above the radar this week. so we want to leave plenty of time for our guest. So we'll go to him now.<br /> <br /> == Interview with &quot;Wallace Sampson, MD&quot; &lt;small&gt;(8:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: So joining us tonight is Dr. Wallace Sampson. Dr. Sampson is an outspoken critic of unscientific, fringe, and bizarre health claims. He is the editor and chief of the <br /> [http://www.sram.org ''Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine''].<br /> And I, your host, is an associate editor of that journal with Dr. Sampson. He is also on the board of directors of the <br /> [http://www.ncahf.org National Council against Health Fraud],<br /> the author of numerous articles and reviews dealing with a range of issues involving science and medicine. He's an Oncologist by training and is a clinical Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Stanford University. Wallace Sampson, thank you for joining us on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> WS: My pleasure.<br /> <br /> S: So, let's go ahead and just start talking about alternative medicine &amp;ndash; complementary, alternative medicine. Give us your view of what this is all about, what role it's playing in modern health care, and what we as skeptical, concerned citizens should think about it.<br /> <br /> WS: Well taking a somewhat historical view of this gives you some very surprising information. I am old enough that I have seen this thing grow, like weeds under my feet. When I first started in this, there were very few so-called alternatives, and we could keep track of them. We knew who the proponents were, we were &amp;ndash; &quot;we&quot; meaning the people and my colleagues who taught me about this &amp;ndash; were called in as consultants and witnesses in hearings and trials. And we were regarded as experts in this whole field. We held offices, official offices in the states' governments, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and were witnesses for the federal attorneys general, and were held in fairly high regard within the scientific community. It was a little niche of interest for most of us, because we were a combination of PhD &amp;ndash; usually bio-chemists &amp;ndash; and MDs with an interest in Physiology and Biochemistry and Pharmacology. <br /> <br /> === Laetrile &lt;small&gt;(10:38)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: Well, when I first got interested in it, it was over a significant and obviously fraudulent material <br /> [[wikipedia:Laetrile#Laetrile|''laetrile'']], ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that was in the early 1970's.<br /> <br /> S: That was the first issue that drew you into this?<br /> <br /> WS: Right. I was trained as a hematologist and oncologist and was a practicing hemog, as we called ourselves, and had patients disappearing from my practice. A few of them ended up, I found out, in clinics across the border from San Diego in Tijuana getting laetrile.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that interested me, so I looked about and got some literature about it, and I tried to figure out what this stuff really was, and I became very confused, because the material I received had a degree of scientific panache and logic to it. So I really didn't know why it was not approved of ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... because if everything the proponents said was true looked like it might be pretty good. Well, in fact, everything the proponents said was false. Not only was it a misinterpretation of things, they actually made it up in other words it was an intentional fraud.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So just for some background, laetrile is a putative cancer cure that was studied for a time in the late sixties and seventies. Basically found to be completely ineffective &amp;ndash; proven ineffective, discarded by ethical scientific medicine, but has had a life after that in these specialty clinics that offer laetrile and essentially claim that the medical establishment is lying to the public about the effectiveness of laetrile. <br /> <br /> B: Did they find some other use for laetrile, completely unrelated to its original claims, something that &quot;just, oh wow, it happens to have an effect on some unrelated condition,&quot; or am I just misremembering that?<br /> <br /> S: Is there any legitimate medical use for laetrile, even outside the realm of cancer?<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There's a legitimate use as a poison, as a matter of fact.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> WS: It's a well known poison of domestic animals in Africa and in some other countries where these were the compounds in laetrile which come from various plants, including maize, and roots that out of which they make poi, casaba root, and a lot of other staples, because it contains twelve percent cyanide by weight.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But it's all natural, it must be good.<br /> <br /> WS: It's all natural.<br /> <br /> S: All natural poison.<br /> <br /> WS: There's a significant public health problem, because the cattle in Africa are poisoned by it. They get thyroid poisoning, become hypothyroid. They get cyanide chronic poisoning with neurological changes and staggering that looks like mad cow disease, and a host of other problems. But these kinds of effects seem not to bother the proponents, and they didn't, of course, mention them in their ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... advertisements and their claims. It bothered the state officials and the public health officials. Anyway, that's laetrile, and yes, it did develop a life of its own. It made the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Life magazines.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: It was a major scandal, because what it really was was a front for a fraudulent stock swindle on the Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges over which people were sentenced to long prison terms in Canada. And that's another aspect of the story ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... which we don't have to deal with. But, nevertheless, it was recognized that this was never intended to be a real cure for cancer. It's just that some of the proponents began to believe their own stories, ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... their own fairy stories. And a lot of other people fell in behind them so that it turned out to be hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1970s and early eighties for cancer patients. Here in the United States, in addition to what the Tijuana clinics were bringing in. It was legal here for awhile as long as a physician signed an affidavit saying that the person could bring in a certain amount for his own use.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That is now run out, and it's illegal here now. But (unintelligible) started with that, and it was a good model for anyone starting in the field because it has all the characteristics of a pseudo-science and a swindle ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and a con. It is not a simple alternative. It has been falsified from the very beginning, and most of these are false from the beginning, if not intentionally so, then they are unintentionally false from the beginning. And what we are trying to do most recently here, and we'll get into this a little bit, is trying to find evidence that tells us with such certainty that the claims are false and the stuff cannot work and the method can't work. But doing clinical trials on this are unnecessary and a waste and lead to other secondary problems that are unexpected.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So my major interest is to try a case for many of these alternatives in the same way that we finally made the case against laetrile.<br /> <br /> === National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine&lt;small&gt;(16:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. I read a recent article that you wrote called ''The Alternative Universe''. This is on the <br /> [http://quackfiles.blogspot.com ''Quack Files Blogspot'']. <br /> Who runs that site, by the way? It's a good website. You may not be aware of it, but there's a host of scientific, medical articles, medicine articles on there. But, anyway, the article that you wrote was specifically about research, the <br /> [http://nccam.nih.gov National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine],<br /> and why it is a waste to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent to study modalities which we already know don't work. For example, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and a slew of other ones that are still popular and in use these days.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: That's basically what you are talking about, like laetrile's the same thing. We already know it doesn't work, so doing a clinical trial where we're giving it to patients who are sick, is unethical.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There are arguments all up the scale, from the very beginning of plausibility of it. For instance, with laetrile, it was implausible from the biochemical and pharmacological standpoint. It was impossible for it to work, and that's what the experts knew at the time, but no one believed them, except for other biochemists and pharmacologists.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But the general public, the press wouldn't believe them. They couldn't even get quoted in articles in the press, because the experts were simply discarded. So you could start on that end of the scale, the very basic scale, and then you could take a look and say &quot;What else is going on?&quot; Take a look at the way they're being promoted. It's being promoted inappropriately and in the wrong places, and they're not able to back up their claims. That's the next level on the scale. And then you can just skip over anything else in between and get to the most ridiculous part of this, which is what this article that I wrote was about, I think, which is trying to put the burden of proof on the medical, scientific establishment to disprove the use of these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And acupuncture's a very good case in point, because acupunture in traditional Chinese medicine was never used to treat a disease, because the Chinese never described diseases.<br /> <br /> S: Right, that's a modern concept. People don't realize that ...<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. <br /> <br /> S: ... before really the scientific model of medicine, people didn't think in terms of specific patho-physiological diseases. They thought everyone had their own particular illness.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: And usually conceived as being some life force or entity being out of balance.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But not diseases. So, of course, they couldn't frame their concept of how acupuncture might be working in terms of treating some specific biological disease. <br /> <br /> WS: Right. And so few people recognize this. I had to point this out very basically to the California Legislature the year before last, and had a very hard time trying to get the point across. I spent two hours with what's called the [[Little Hoover Commission|&lt;nowiki/&gt;]][[wikipedia:Little_Hoover_Commission|''Little Hoover Commission'']]'' ''here, explaining this. And they were so fascinated by it, it was so new to them, and these were not unintelligent people, very intelligent people, who were assigned by the state legislature in California to come up with a solution to the education of acupuncturists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And they spent more time listening to me than they did listening to anybody else because no one else had ever brought this up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And I brought up all the material I had learned from our buddies, who are associate editors and people we associate with, but I learned a lot from them. The amazing thing was that none of the legislatures had ever come to terms with this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The consultants in the Little Hoover Commission had not. The California Medical Association had no one who had ever given this kind of testimony, and it's so very basic, what you just said, Steve, that's the basis of the objection to acupuncture in the first place. There was no system of science or observation in China, since sixty to eighty percent of the complaints that people have when they go to a doctor or healer are either self-limited or psychogenic, most of them get better with time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Every doctor knows this, and we all know this now, but no one ever put that together with traditional Chinese medicine, because that was the reason that they all became self-deluded.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: They thought that what they were doing was working sixty to eighty percent of the time, and they were impressed with themselves. So they kept doing it, and repeating and repeating the errors.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So that's another level at which you can take a look at this whole situation and try to educate the public about it, which we are trying to do at the present time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: As you work your way up the scale even further, there has been a development in medicine called ''[[evidence-based medicine]]''. Evidenced-based medicine has developed clinical trials, randomized clinical trials to a degree that makes them much more &amp;ndash; when they are done properly they are much more accurate and can much more accurately predict whether something really works or not.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Or one thing works better than another. So evidence-based medicine has developed its own scale of rating various clinical trials to see how well the trial was done. And I won't go into that at the moment, but I think you could imagine how you could look at trial and were the patients randomized, were there blinds, blinding measures appropriate ...<br /> <br /> S: Was the outcome measures appropriate? Right.<br /> <br /> WS: Appropriate observations, appropriate statistics, and all these kinds of things that go into the analysis of a trial. So they've done pretty well with that. However, there are lots of holes, and what they don't have is any kind of a method for detecting fraud, or detecting fabrication. And so someone can make up a trial and publish it, and they have no way of knowing that it's made up. And, indeed, we have discovered some of these, and very few other people have. I must give credit to our crew of Steve and Bruce Lamm and Bob Emory and others who have been looking at these things and been able to detect where the frauds are. And the popular view is that we're not being listened to by University professors, because they have been deluded into thinking that the only way that you can really prove or disprove a method is by a clinical trial, and the only way they can improve is by tightening up the controls, and, still, there will be holes there and they can be defrauded. It's been going on today, and it's been going on for the past twenty years.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Bob, you had a question?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. I was going to say that you said that there were holes, there's no way to detect fraud, but isn't it also one of the other hallmarks of evidence-based medicine is duplication, duplication of the experiments in the trials to see if you come up with similar results. Wouldn't that shed light on the fact if there was fraud or gross errors?<br /> <br /> WS: It should. Ideally it does. There are two ways of tightening further. One is doing larger trials with larger numbers to increase the power of the study. The second is to have it reproduced by another group. But there are a couple of problems with this. Think about how long this would take. You spend say 30,000 dollars to 300,000 dollars doing a clinical trial with forty subjects and forty controls, which would give you an 85 percent power of being certain that your P-value will turn out to be correct. When you get a P-value of .05 or .01, which means chances are only one-in-twenty to one-in-a-hundred it could have been due to chance. Well suppose you made some systematic error in the setting up of the trial that you're unaware of. The first thing to do is for some other outfit to repeat the trial. While in the first place, most research grants are not given for specific repeats of someone else's work. They're mostly giving as grants for looking at in a different way or under different circumstances or for a different disorder. So you start to vary from that ideal repetition because of the way the granting agencies behave. I can only tell you that they think that the returns on the money that they will put into the grant will be much less if it's just for a repeat of something that's already in the literature. So a systematic error, unless it's repeated exactly the same way &amp;ndash; unless its trial is repeated the same way, a systematic error can be repeated, and nobody even knows it's there. That's number one. Number two, it took six months to a year to write up the grant request in the first place. It took another year or two to gather the patients into the trial. Another year or two to observe them &amp;ndash; maybe five years to observe them to see what the results are, and then another year to assimilate the data, write it up, and another six months to a year to get the paper accepted, because it goes through reviews, rejections, and the average rejection rate is two rejections per paper. So already you've got the work that's extended out from the ideal of about a year where you'd like to really know that's when you'd like to know what's really going on to five to maybe ten years before results are even published, and then start the repeats. And suppose you do get some outfit to repeat your work exactly the same way? Well, unless there's someone like our group out there looking for all these systematic errors and looking for something that could be wrong, you're going to have another five years to ten years before you have the answer. Now we're up to fifteen to twenty years. Meantime, these things are being marketed, and they're being talked up on websites and in books and on radio programs on anywhere else, and making their way into medical schools as part of alternative medicine instruction, and so forth, and some of these things get lives of their own, and it may be decades before they're disproved. That's the problem, and not only that, but it takes five or ten of these trials to be able to prove or disprove within some degree of certainty that something works or doesn't work, because each trial then is looking at a slightly different angle.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And just not a true replication. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Now, of course, all of this, (unintelligible) for one second, all of this of course applies to any modality that we care to study, even legitimate scientific plausible modalities. But I think that the key difference is within conventional scientific medicine, practitioners tend to be much more conservative. We don't tend to jump on the bandwagon of one study, but rather wait for a consensus of a few trials to come out, wait for the replication. We take a more skeptical eye towards any new therapeutic claims. It's certainly true that sometimes modalities may become incorporated into our practice, and then later studies contradict or show that it does work, but then we abandoned them. We get rid of the ones that don't work. In the alternative medicine world, there is never, ever a case where an alternative medicine proponent will come to the conclusion that any modality doesn't work. It simply does not exist for them.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. I've never found one either.<br /> <br /> S: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Weil Andrew Weil] has never, ever, ever, condemned any alternative modality as not working.<br /> <br /> E: And the media loves him. Loves him!<br /> <br /> S: Oh they love him. He's the guru of the century. In your article you point out that the National Center after ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars has not proven anything to be ineffective, which is absurd in the scientific medical world.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There have been a few advances. We were making this point up until about a year ago. Within the past year or two there have been some exceptions to that, and one is Andrew Weil has condemned [[wikipedia:Chelation_therapy|chelation therapy]].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, that's good.<br /> <br /> WS: That's one. But that's about it. Of all the hundreds of alternatives ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... that's the only one I know that he won't say works. Or says doesn't work.<br /> <br /> === Echinacea &lt;small&gt;(29:44)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: The second exception is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinacea echinacea], and after the last two trials the [[wikipedia:National_Center_for_Complementary_and_Integrative_Health|National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine]] head has finally made a statement that it shouldn't be used ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... and stopped research on it. However, he got a letter from the industry. I forget which industrial group this was ...<br /> <br /> S: &quot;He&quot; being [https://nccih.nih.gov/about/offices/od/bio.htm Stephen Straus], the head of the National Center.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Right. He got a letter very recently from the supplement industry telling him he was wrong about this and should ...<br /> <br /> S: Recant his ... <br /> <br /> WS: ... reject what he said, because he did exactly that, and he took back what he said, and put in a specific statement saying &quot;More studies are needed.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: More studies.<br /> <br /> WS: Because they didn't use the dose that was recommended. And for reasons like that. That's what the Council on Nutrition had claimed, and they sent a letter to the editor of the New England Journal, also, and our leader, Stephen Straus, of the National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine actually bowed to these people in the industry and withdrew his previous statement saying that echinacea didn't work, and came out with this mealy-mouth statement. Now I might add that my article in the New England Journal that was regarding that last clinical trial, made the point that there was no historical reason that anyone can find to indicate that it should be used in colds and flus.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: In other words, Native Americans had used it for at least thirteen to twenty-one different uses, including an inhalation of its smoke, use of echinacea as a compress, and all sorts of other &amp;ndash; and use as a local application for a painful tooth and a sore throat, but never was their use in a viral type illness or a feverish illness. And all the primary information that we consulted, and I consulted at least fifteen textbooks on this, and also the original text that related what the original Indians had told the traders.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The American and French and Spanish traders. Never was there a claim for that. The claim came from one Swiss and one German homeopath and quack who saw this material. It's a long story and will be published in our journal, but what they did was they got somewhat deluded by one fellows' trip to South Dakota and a talk with a medicine man's son, and came back and made it up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: He actually invented it in Germany, and marketed it as a cold cure.<br /> <br /> S: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> WS: That's how it became popular in the United States. There was no basis for researching it at all!<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: And of course that was completely ignored by the letters to the editor and ignored by National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So this gives you a little idea of what we are up against here.<br /> <br /> === Alternative Medicine Culture &lt;small&gt;(33:11)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Let me back up just a minute because, while I and my colleagues have been dealing with this issue for a long time, for many years, struggling really to find a way in my opinion to really get across to the public, to regulators, to educators, what it is we care about. I think that we get bogged down in terminology like &quot;scientific medicine,&quot; &quot;evidence-based medicine,&quot; et cetera. And the alternative medicine crowd I think have really learned over the years to expertly use terminology to their advantage. They really play that game very well. But honestly, when you break it down, I think what we're talking about is some very basic principles. The first being that medicine should be safe and effective. I think this is sort of a common ground that everyone can agree on. That it's inefficient, unethical, improper to use treatments which either don't work or which are unsafe. Although you'd be amazed at how difficult it is some times to get the alternative medicine people to agree to that. We further believe that over the last hundred, hundred and fifty years we've had some accumulative process of figuring out the best way to know what works and to know what is safe, and that these are really &amp;ndash; again, there's no magic to this. I think people use the term &quot;science&quot; as if it's a magic wand. Basically, all we're talking about is intellectual integrity, fairly accounting for the evidence, using methods which are appropriate and legitimate, using valid logic in assessing claims, using appropriate statistics. That's it! That's all that we're really advocating. There's not really a big ideological or philosophical issue at stake here. It's really just an issue of quality. And when you dig down deep into any of these alternative modalities, what you find is that intellectually, they're extremely lacking. Either they're outright fraud, or they do not account for the evidence, or they are employing grossly invalid logic, or all of the above. Would you agree with the basic assessment?<br /> <br /> WS: Very good! I sure do.<br /> <br /> S: We say not that we're against all alternative or against some kind of artificial category, we think that &quot;medicine is medicine&quot;. There is one medicine, and it should have the best quality possible. You brought up evidenced-based medicine. That is just I think is just the latest iteration of mainstream medicine's dedication to again this sort of excellence and quality in medicine, in health care. But you're right in that it has some holes in it, and I think the big one that we haven't talked about is the fact that it doesn't consider plausibility or prior probability.<br /> <br /> WS: Mmmmm.<br /> <br /> S: So it assess empirical evidence essentially in an intellectual vacuum, as if we don't have a hundred and fifty years of biology and medicine behind us, which I think is just utter folly. Wouldn't you agree with that?<br /> <br /> WS: Well I sure do. We've been bouncing this one back and forth for I think the past four years or five.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And trying to figure out a good way to approach this so that the medical journals would accept what we had to say and not reject it off-hand ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... as offensive as they so often do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The other thing that was sort of implied in what we've been talking about so far, but I think it's worth talking about for a few minutes, is what really is the size and scope of the alternative medicine phenomenon in our culture. Clearly it has risen to higher prominence in society, but my sense is that the public has been led to believe, essentially by a sensationalistic and credulous media, that there is a paradigm shift &amp;ndash; I always hear that term being used &amp;ndash; within scientific medicine, with science itself, and that it is being increasingly accepting of alternative modalities. But I just do not see that. I do not believe that that is the case. What I ...<br /> <br /> P: You hear that about scientific community, not the public?<br /> <br /> S: About both. About both.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: But yes, the claim is absolutely being made about the scientific community. In fact what we see when we survey health-care professionals et cetera &amp;ndash; and, again, I work inside an academic institution, so I can tell you from my direct experience is that ninety-five, ninety-six percent of scientists and health-care professionals think it's bunk. They just don't care about it. It's below their radar. They think it's a cultural pop fad that is not worthy of their time and attention. They may out of some misguided attempt at political correctness they may not condemn it in harsh terms, but they certainly don't think anything of it. There's only about four to five percent of practitioners who are really enamored of and dedicated &amp;ndash; really on ideological and philosophical grounds &amp;ndash; to these spiritual, new-age or anti-scientific or unscientific modalities, and they're the ones who are making all the noise. And they're trying to make it sound like there's a revolution going on inside medicine. It's really a false revolution, but the media is buying it, and they're selling this fiction to the public.<br /> <br /> P: Why? What is the allure of the media? What attracts them to it so powerfully?<br /> <br /> WS: &quot;Man bites dog&quot;. Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news. It's the unusual happening instead of the usual happening.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: That's what makes news.<br /> <br /> S: It's a little also counter-culture and anti-establishment.<br /> <br /> WS: I wish I had begun to tabulate the number of reporters I've talked to over the past ten or twenty years, who admitted to me that they thought that this whole thing was bunk, and yet wrote up their articles as if there's really something there.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> WS: And I wish I could have just tabulated the number, because it just from my memory it's about ninety, ninety-five percent of them.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: What?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's my experience, too, although I will have to say that reporters I think tell you what they think you want to hear as a method of opening you up.<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I don't know if that really reflects their views, or if they're just buttering us up, because they know they're interviewing &quot;the skeptic.&quot; So &quot;Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical, too.&quot; so, &quot;Let me hear it, tell me what you really think.&quot;<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I agree that in general I think I can get a sense when people are BSing me, or if they're genuinely skeptical. If they could really talk the talk. And I've had that experience, too, where you deal with either a producer or a reporter or whatever who appears to be by all accounts fairly skeptical, but they produce a credulous piece. It's usually out of naivety, just unfamiliarity with the topic at hand or because they believe that they're dealing with a &quot;fluff piece&quot;, and therefore they don't have to.<br /> <br /> P: But I'm sure there are a large number of people who author articles that they don't believe in just because they think ...<br /> <br /> S: Sure.<br /> <br /> P: ... they look good in print that it'll please their editors ...<br /> <br /> E: That's their job.<br /> <br /> P: ... et cetera, et cetera. Right. It's their job. I believe that, a lot of them.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. My curiosity is: will the public acceptance of the presence of alternative medicine rise to the point where it will no longer be sensational, or will in fact we run through the cycle where the press will be interested in doing stories about the evils of alternative medicine? I don't know if that cycle is going to occur, but I'm watching and waiting to see if it does.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, it will take a slew of deaths related to alternative medicine that might turn people against it.<br /> <br /> S: Only celebrity deaths will help.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Like the baseball player that died.<br /> <br /> S: You have to kill off famous people, otherwise the public won't care.<br /> <br /> P: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> E: That baseball player that died, what was it, one year ago or two years ago. Ephedrin?<br /> <br /> S: Of [[ephedra]].<br /> <br /> E: Ephedra.<br /> <br /> S: Definitely it was helpful. Although &amp;ndash; and the FDA &amp;ndash; this was the one and only &quot;supplement&quot; that the FDA was able to ban under the ridiculous dietary supplement and health education act of 1994. And in fact there are already calls to have that reversed because the industry is claiming that the FDA, even though it took them six years to compile the evidence that ephedra was unhealthy, was too risky to be marketed, the industry is now claiming that they didn't make their case. Again, they're using the dose issue, that the ...<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... marketing at a lower dose could potentially be safe.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't Peter &amp;ndash; sorry, Steve, I didn't mean to interrupt you.<br /> <br /> S: Go ahead.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't [[Peter Sellers]] and [[wikipedia:Andy_Kaufman|Andy Kauffman]] have [[psychic surgery]]?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: That didn't help them very much.<br /> <br /> WS: They also went for laetrile.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, really.<br /> <br /> WS: Andy Kauffman did. [[Steve McQueen]].<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Down to the border clinics across the border in Mexico. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And Peter Sellers had chelation therapy, in addition to the psychic surgery.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, he did.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. That's right. Now I remember.<br /> <br /> === Chelation Therapy &lt;small&gt;(42:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Chelation therapy, again, it's a legitimate treatment for heavy-metal poisoning, but there is a small subset of dedicated practitioners who are using it to treat &amp;ndash; prevent heart attacks and strokes. Decades of evidence has shown that it doesn't work, and any putative mechanism by which it might work has been proven to be wrong. Again, really within ethical, scientific medicine, it's use for vascular diseases has been discarded. There are just some people who will not be persuaded by the evidence.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. And there's a side issue here which is most important, and very difficult to gather data on this, but the doctors who use chelation are obviously &amp;ndash; I think you have to invent a new term for it, and I call it intellectually with specific intellectual deficit. Intellectually deficient in specific areas. In other words they can function very well maintaining their bank accounts and even repair their cars and may even write glorious novels, but when it comes to this one specific area of chelation for cardiovascular disease, they completely lose their heads. <br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: These people are dangerous, and chelation has been a major reason for physicians having their licenses revoked or suspended ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... over the past thirty, forty years. These are bad doctors.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: The best way the boards could catch them was to catch them giving chelation. Now, unfortunately, there've been some movements in the legal field which have defanged the boards, taken away their ability to prosecute these physicians on the basis of this one action.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And these chelationists, it's practically all they do, so you can't catch them doing other things. You have to catch them ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... from some patient who's died or had a bad complication. The problem is they give so little of the stuff that it can't possibly work, and it doesn't produce any side effects or toxicity in the highly dilute form that's given. So they get off doing it, and the quirks in the law and the quirks in the board policies that have been recently changed are responsible for its continuation, actually.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now ... <br /> <br /> WS: The Doctors, the whole system has been changed around chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> S: That's right. What you are basically talking about is a class of laws called the &quot;health care freedom&quot; laws, basically, and these kinds of things are regulated on a state by state basis. Each state has their own department of health or their health board that regulates licensing health care professionals and physicians and also disciplining them. And, traditionally, a state health board can discipline or even remove the license of a physician if they were practicing sub-standard medical care. The burden of proof was on the state, but if the state could prove through appropriate use of expert witnesses and evidence, et cetera, that a physician was practicing bad medicine, what we call sub-standard care, they could be disciplined. They could have their license taken away. This is a measure of protecting the public from fraudulent or just bad doctors, who are practicing bad medicine. Well, in the legal and cultural milieu that we find ourselves now, under the banner of &quot;health care freedom&quot;, a number of states have passed health care freedom laws, which specifically state &amp;ndash; there's different formulations, but the bottom line is that any practitioner who is practicing &quot;alternative medicine&quot;, which is kind of an artificial category, but something similar to &quot;complementary, alternative medicine&quot; can not be disciplined for practicing sub-standard care. In other words, they are not held to any standard of care.<br /> <br /> E: Freedom to commit fraud, basically.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, absolutely. The state of Florida has this law &amp;ndash; I was involved recently a couple of years ago in a case where there was a neurologist who was practising fraudulent, horribly bad medicine, and it's clear, to me, that he just made up his treatment, just designed to make money out of patients. We proved to a legal certainty, the judge decided that he was indeed practising sub-standard care, but then he appealed on the basis that what he was doing was alternative, and under the Florida statute got off scott-free, and is now free to commit quackery and fraud against patients because of this law. And this whole movement is very closely tied to the whole chelation therapy movement, the freedom for these doctors to prescribe their chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. It is an aspect of this changing paradigm. That concept actually developed in the late nineteen-seventies that predicted the paradigm would change, so that all of these things would then become appropriate therapies has changed, but it's only changed within certain segments, including the legal part of societies. It certainly hasn't changed science, at all.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because, as you said before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: But it has changed the practicalities of it, the practices, and some of the public perception.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So what there is, is an increasing disparity, and increasing disconnect between science, what scientists and scientific practitioners believe and do, and what the law states the regulation of medicine and also what the public thinks is really going on.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: A broadening gap between science and the public is always, always a bad thing. In this arena, we're talking about direct health effects, not some abstract, down-the-road danger of believing in silliness, but some decisions that are made directly and have an immediate impact on people's health. Sometimes even to the point of premature death. We see that all the time, certainly.<br /> <br /> WS: Yup. Another aspect to this has been what I don't think the public has any recognition of this or realization of it, and very few people in the field of medicine recognize what's going on either is that when the claim is made that increasing numbers of people are going for alternative medicine, and it's being more and more accepted, the reaction of physicians is to say &quot;What are we doing wrong?&quot; ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... number one, and number two is to come to an accomodation with it. Instead of opposing it, they say: well, we've done something wrong, it's our fault, and so what can we do? We must get along with the patients who believe in this ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and want to do it, and we must help them, and the interests of their lives and their happiness ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... regardless of how we feel about it, and regardless of our consciences and what our rationality tells us. And you get the same reaction in medical literature among medical editors and journals. An article, for instance, that opposes, that presents information opposing the use of these unscientific methods will usually be rejected. There are very few articles in the literature that have been accepted that propose that physicians reject them as a group or as individuals or that try to work with a patient to discourage them from using these things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That fascinates me.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Fascinates me greatly, as as matter of fact.<br /> <br /> S: It's become politically incorrect.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Which is the enemy of reason, rationality, and science, and basically you're saying that you have some ideology or political concern which trumps evidence, reason, logic, and science. And, again, it has immediate and very severe detrimental effect on the public health.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: To my lay mind the thing that would seem to have the most profound negative impact on these alternative modalities is simply their lack of efficacy, right? If it doesn't work, who's going to use it? Or more to the point, who's going to pay for it? And yet it doesn't seem to have any impact at all, and I guess that's because ...<br /> <br /> B: Human psychology.<br /> <br /> P: ... of placebo, self-limiting disease, and the fact that they're often taking these alternative modalities along with evidence-based medicine, I think.<br /> <br /> WS: Well, that's interesting, because the perception of the patient shifts, but it starts out with this usually deluded or self-deluded recognition that I'm doing this for my cancer, say of the prostate, and I seem to be doing very well (I just got radiation of course, and my PSA level is going down), but I'm on all these supplements, and I intend to stay on the supplements because I want to cover all bases. And eventually I get to believe my PSA keeps going down, it must be the supplements. That's what I'm doing. This is very powerful. And then when the PSA starts to rise again, well the reason must be that I'm taking the wrong supplements, so I'll change. Or I'm not taking enough of it, or I skip too many doses. And that kind of rationalization comes in. The socking in of belief, the power of that belief, is such that people don't make the right decision. They don't make rational decisions ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... based on what they truly have observed. They make the decision based on what they think they would want to have happened.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And what they want to have happened.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And the psychologists have studied this phenomenon for many years, and that's why Steve and I are enthralled with psychology brethren ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... who have laid these things out. And there's book after book that there must be five or ten at least well-written textbooks on this matter that are taught in advanced and upper-division psychology classes, and that we use all the time in our teaching. The psychologists have figure all this stuff out. But even though you can deal with it intellectually, individual patients, when they are faced with these personal problems, fail to recognize that what they even may have learned through a textbook and through a course and lecture, they fail to be able to apply it to themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The bottom line is, and again this is well, well described and very thoroughly understood, is that there is always an almost complete disconnect between what patients, what the public perceives and what's really going on in terms of their illness or their response to treatment. There's a host of psychological mechanisms at work that overwhelm any perception of reality. Scientists know this. We all know this. That's why you need to do carefully designed studies. Studies, when a study is &quot;carefully designed&quot;, what that means is it is designed to eliminate the effect of all of these biases that we know are there. Anecdotal evidence, the reason why anecdotal evidence is pejorative, is because it's not controlling for all of this variety, this host of psychological and biasing factors. Anecdotal evidence is worse than worthless, because it tends to lead one to conclusions they wish to be true. It has almost no relationship to the actual truth. And that's really a critical point of understanding between our position, the scientific and rational position, and alternative medicine proponents, is they just don't get that. They don't want to get that. They're happy to rely on anecdotal evidence because you can prove anything with it, because, again, it leads you happily to whatever conclusions you wish to be true.<br /> <br /> WS: That's so right.<br /> <br /> S: It's critical for us to make that point to the public, that the fact that something seem to work is meaningless. It's absolutely meaningless. I can't tell you how many times people come to me &amp;ndash; and we hear this, too, in all areas of skepticism, &quot;Well how do you explain this? A friend of mine had this disease and he took this bizarre treatment, and he got better. How do you explain that?&quot; Well, that's anecdotal; it can't be explained. But it's worthless as evidence. It just runs totally contrary to basic human psychology, I guess. <br /> <br /> B: And Steve, don't forget, and I'm sure you didn't forget, but also it's worth pointing out that science-based medicine also helps prevent biases on the part not only of the patient but of the experimenter, the scientists themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. Everyone involved needs to be &amp;ndash; there needs to be precautions taken against bias. The observer, the person conducting the trial, the subject, and the analysis of the data at the back end. Any time there is a potential for bias to get into the final analysis of the data, it will be there, so you have to design it in such a way either that it can't influence the results or are averaged out over large numbers of subjects.<br /> <br /> WS: We want to both praise the doing of appropriate randomized clinical trials, while at the same time try to point out the defects.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The things they can't really cover, at least not yet been designed to cover.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But we think that's correctable.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: I'm convinced that bringing in, as you've said, prior probability, which we haven't talked about much, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: ... but that can actually be factored in quantitatively as a choice of numbers ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and plausibility, and factor in considerations for the possibility of fabrication and fraud. We have a list of things to look for that simply haven't been incorporated yet.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: We're all for evidenced-based medicine or for sure tightening it up and recognizing its limitations, as well.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. In fact, again, scientist practitioners consider prior plausibility on a day-to-day basis. <br /> <br /> WS: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We know biology. We know how things work, basically. We know the limitations on our knowledge of how things work, and whenever a new treatment comes down the pike, the instinct of the scientists or the clinician is to think &quot;How could that work?&quot; Does that make any sense given everything else that we think we know about biology and medicine. That's the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience consilience] of medicine. And I think that would solve the problem to a large degree if any claim to knowledge has to be accounted for within the framework of everything that's already been established to whatever degree it has been established. You can't take some new idea in an absolute vacuum as if we don't know anything.<br /> <br /> WS: Sure. As a matter of fact it comes into play the moment you start to make up a clinical trial or apply for a grant.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: Because you can't make up a study of intestinal flu in ants ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and try apply it to humans.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: What on earth are you talking about?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because there is no plausibility there. So it's actually done repeatedly. The problem in alternative medicine is that almost all claims in humans are now plausibile. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Right. They want to change the rules. They want to change the rules.<br /> <br /> WS: They are changing them, that's right. They are changing the rules.<br /> <br /> S: Plausibility is equated to closed mindedness.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They dismiss all of it. You make any kind of assessment of prior probability or plausibility, they interpret that as being close-minded and dismissive.<br /> <br /> WS: Exactly. It's up to us to make the case to bring it in in a convincing way.<br /> <br /> S: Well, it's an uphill battle.<br /> <br /> WS: It sure is.<br /> <br /> S: We'll keep plugging away. Well I hate to say this but our time once again is up. It always goes by so quickly. Dr. Sampson, again, we appreciate having you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thanks for joining us.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> WS: It was my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.<br /> <br /> S: Great! I hope to have you back again in the future. We just barely scratched the surface. There's so much more.<br /> <br /> E: There's so much. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Perry, Evan, Bob &amp;ndash; thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}}<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_21&diff=9613 2015-02-01T04:52:54Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Alternative Medicine Culture (33:11) */ Added links</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |categories = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 21<br /> |episodeDate = 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File: LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y <br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = WS: {{w|Wallace Sampson}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-07-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Today is December 7th, 2005. With me today as always are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Good-evening<br /> <br /> S: ... Perry DeAngelis<br /> <br /> P: I'll have to put down my copy of the Psychic Sasquatch to join you, but I shall.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, thanks for the sacrifice. You can get back to it later. And again as always Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Hello everyone<br /> <br /> S: Guys, thanks for joining me tonight.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: So today is December 7th, a day that will live in infamy, right? The Pearl Harbor Day.<br /> <br /> B: That's right.<br /> <br /> E: Pearl Harbor Day<br /> <br /> B: I remember that, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I'll never forget that.<br /> <br /> S: We will remember all of the Americans who lost their lives and limbs on that infamous day in 1941.<br /> <br /> E: Changed the world. Changed the world forever.<br /> <br /> S: When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor<br /> <br /> E: When the Germans bombed &amp;ndash; yes, there's evidence to prove that.<br /> <br /> S: So we have an excellent guest on our show tonight. Wallace Sampson ...<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> S: ... who will be joining us in just a few minutes. <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Intelligent Design Course Withdrawn (1: 13)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> But first there's just a couple of quick news items. First an update on our last show. We had reported that the University of Kansas was planning a course entitled ''Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies''. The course was to be put on by <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirecki Professor Paul Mirecki]. <br /> We discussed the fact that the University, trying to retain some shred of scientific credibility and prestige is trying to do anything to counteract the fact that the Kansas State School Board for a second time is voting to either limit the teaching of evolution or promote the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas public schools.<br /> <br /> Well, unfortunately the course has now been withdrawn by the University of Kansas. The apparent reason for doing this is the fact that Paul Mirecki, again the Professor who was going to run the course, made some indiscreet, anti-religious remarks. Actually, it was in an email to students. And he was slapped on the wrist by the University. He had to formally apologize. He said &quot;I made a mistake in not leading by example in this student organisation email forum the importance of discussing differing view points in a civil and respectful manner,&quot; he said. The Chancellor, <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hemenway Robert Hemenway], <br /> referred to his comments as &quot;repugnant and vile&quot;. Whenever you make any comment that is insensitive, it always seems that the University has to condemn it in the most extreme language they could possibly muster.<br /> <br /> P: Do we have any idea of the nature of the comments?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, lets see. He said he was mocking Christian Fundamentalists.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's pretty broad.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think he called them &amp;ndash; referred to Religious Conservatives as &quot;Fundies&quot;, and said ...<br /> <br /> P: &quot;Fundies&quot;?<br /> <br /> S: ... and said &quot;a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a nice slap in their big fat face.&quot; That's it.<br /> <br /> P: That's pretty horrific. I mean that's really, really (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> S: Obviously he shouldn't of done that. He's a Professor, and ...<br /> <br /> P: I agree<br /> <br /> S: ... he's teaching a controversial course to specifically, to highlight the intellectual superiority of scientific honesty above religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. And he totally muddied it with these unnecessary comments.<br /> <br /> P: It's true. I mean he shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: It's just unfortunate. It's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> P: He shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: Although I have the sense that the University was happy to have an excuse to cancel it and get out of the controversy. They should have stuck to their guns. They should have made him apologize but not pull the course. I don't see why they had to do that.<br /> <br /> E: Right, sounds like, I don't know, an excuse. Maybe they were never too hot on the course to begin with, and it's just a door that opened to allow it to be gone. <br /> <br /> S: It's unfortunate. He should have known that by doing this he was putting himself in the limelight as it were, and he should have really been on his best behavior.<br /> <br /> P: Cancelling the course still seems a little extreme.<br /> <br /> S: I think so. I think it's a little excessive. So we'll keep you updated on this raging culture war. The judge has yet to make a decision in the case. You'll be sure to hear about it on the Skeptics' Guide when a decision comes down regarding the constitutionalilty of requiring teaching intelligent design in Dover Pennsylvania Public schools.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> === Weeping Icons (5: 00)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Another item that came to our attention this week was: there is a new sighting of a weeping Virgin Mary icon. Now Bob, you brought this article to our attention.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I read a little bit about this. As reported in the <br /> [http://www.sacbee.com Sacramento Bee]<br /> there's a humble &amp;ndash; described as a humble Vietnamese Catholic Martyr's Church. There's an outdoor statue of Mary that has become very popular with hundreds and hundreds of visitors coming by, rain or shine, since late November. Apparently there's a red streak running from the corner of her left eye, and that has been causing quite a stir. People have been coming and praying and thinking it's a miracle. <br /> <br /> S: They think she's crying blood?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, essentially, I mean red streak, I mean you've got to think, oh yeah, it must be blood, miraculous bleeding.<br /> <br /> E: Simple, simple test, simple test could...<br /> <br /> B: It says here that the Priest wiped the streak away on November 9th but then it reappeared on November 20th, and many viewed it as tears of blood being shed, of course.<br /> <br /> S: Right<br /> <br /> B: National media attention, many &amp;ndash; lots of crowds, &quot;I believe it's a miracle,&quot; said Florence Chempako. And I was very nicely surprised to see [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] quoted in this article. He said ...<br /> <br /> S: Of course<br /> <br /> B: He says that he wrote &quot;Looking for a miracle and the red streak as a hoax but not without possible value. Such events often can draw believers and non-believers to the church&quot;. Makes a lot of sense.<br /> <br /> E: Huh, huh.<br /> <br /> B: With national media attention and hundreds of people visiting everyday for weeks and weeks, I am sure they've seen a lot of new members.<br /> <br /> S: Even if it turns out to be a hoax, the purpose was served.<br /> <br /> B: Right. It's a win--win. It's a totally win--win situation for them. And it says here that he took issue with the church. He described it as a clumsy, obvious hoax and had issues with the church for not acting quickly to test the substance.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: It says here that he's quoted as saying: &quot;If the statue is a fraud or a hoax, or even just a mistake, it should be determined, and that should be that,&quot; Nickell said. &quot;If it's a fake then it should be repudiated&quot;. And then, Steve, they actually had a quote from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_and_Lorraine_Warren Lorrainne Warren].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, really. They tracked her down.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, a Conneticut investigator of paranormal events for over 50 years admitted to a &quot;believe first&quot; approach. &quot;Until you can disprove it, look at it as real,&quot; Warren said. Which I thought was ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's about right.<br /> <br /> B: ... not surprising but still an interesting perspective.<br /> <br /> S: Now there have been cases similar to this in the past where they did test the blood, and they found it to match the type of blood and in fact DNA match to one of the people in the church or in the home.<br /> <br /> E: Hm.<br /> <br /> S: And the comment was &quot;Well, that just proves how miraculous it is. God can use any blood he wants to create this miracle&quot;.<br /> <br /> E: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Again you can't falsify faith-based beliefs. Which, again, why these kind of things are a win-win. You know the church can never really lose, because the true believers will continue to believe regardless of whatever evidence comes down the pike later. So that was it, that was the only skeptical items that peeked above the radar this week. so we want to leave plenty of time for our guest. So we'll go to him now.<br /> <br /> == Interview with &quot;Wallace Sampson, MD&quot; &lt;small&gt;(8:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: So joining us tonight is Dr. Wallace Sampson. Dr. Sampson is an outspoken critic of unscientific, fringe, and bizarre health claims. He is the editor and chief of the <br /> [http://www.sram.org ''Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine''].<br /> And I, your host, is an associate editor of that journal with Dr. Sampson. He is also on the board of directors of the <br /> [http://www.ncahf.org National Council against Health Fraud],<br /> the author of numerous articles and reviews dealing with a range of issues involving science and medicine. He's an Oncologist by training and is a clinical Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Stanford University. Wallace Sampson, thank you for joining us on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> WS: My pleasure.<br /> <br /> S: So, let's go ahead and just start talking about alternative medicine &amp;ndash; complementary, alternative medicine. Give us your view of what this is all about, what role it's playing in modern health care, and what we as skeptical, concerned citizens should think about it.<br /> <br /> WS: Well taking a somewhat historical view of this gives you some very surprising information. I am old enough that I have seen this thing grow, like weeds under my feet. When I first started in this, there were very few so-called alternatives, and we could keep track of them. We knew who the proponents were, we were &amp;ndash; &quot;we&quot; meaning the people and my colleagues who taught me about this &amp;ndash; were called in as consultants and witnesses in hearings and trials. And we were regarded as experts in this whole field. We held offices, official offices in the states' governments, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and were witnesses for the federal attorneys general, and were held in fairly high regard within the scientific community. It was a little niche of interest for most of us, because we were a combination of PhD &amp;ndash; usually bio-chemists &amp;ndash; and MDs with an interest in Physiology and Biochemistry and Pharmacology. <br /> <br /> === Laetrile &lt;small&gt;(10:38)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: Well, when I first got interested in it, it was over a significant and obviously fraudulent material <br /> [[wikipedia:Laetrile#Laetrile|''laetrile'']], ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that was in the early 1970's.<br /> <br /> S: That was the first issue that drew you into this?<br /> <br /> WS: Right. I was trained as a hematologist and oncologist and was a practicing hemog, as we called ourselves, and had patients disappearing from my practice. A few of them ended up, I found out, in clinics across the border from San Diego in Tijuana getting laetrile.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that interested me, so I looked about and got some literature about it, and I tried to figure out what this stuff really was, and I became very confused, because the material I received had a degree of scientific panache and logic to it. So I really didn't know why it was not approved of ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... because if everything the proponents said was true looked like it might be pretty good. Well, in fact, everything the proponents said was false. Not only was it a misinterpretation of things, they actually made it up in other words it was an intentional fraud.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So just for some background, laetrile is a putative cancer cure that was studied for a time in the late sixties and seventies. Basically found to be completely ineffective &amp;ndash; proven ineffective, discarded by ethical scientific medicine, but has had a life after that in these specialty clinics that offer laetrile and essentially claim that the medical establishment is lying to the public about the effectiveness of laetrile. <br /> <br /> B: Did they find some other use for laetrile, completely unrelated to its original claims, something that &quot;just, oh wow, it happens to have an effect on some unrelated condition,&quot; or am I just misremembering that?<br /> <br /> S: Is there any legitimate medical use for laetrile, even outside the realm of cancer?<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There's a legitimate use as a poison, as a matter of fact.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> WS: It's a well known poison of domestic animals in Africa and in some other countries where these were the compounds in laetrile which come from various plants, including maize, and roots that out of which they make poi, casaba root, and a lot of other staples, because it contains twelve percent cyanide by weight.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But it's all natural, it must be good.<br /> <br /> WS: It's all natural.<br /> <br /> S: All natural poison.<br /> <br /> WS: There's a significant public health problem, because the cattle in Africa are poisoned by it. They get thyroid poisoning, become hypothyroid. They get cyanide chronic poisoning with neurological changes and staggering that looks like mad cow disease, and a host of other problems. But these kinds of effects seem not to bother the proponents, and they didn't, of course, mention them in their ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... advertisements and their claims. It bothered the state officials and the public health officials. Anyway, that's laetrile, and yes, it did develop a life of its own. It made the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Life magazines.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: It was a major scandal, because what it really was was a front for a fraudulent stock swindle on the Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges over which people were sentenced to long prison terms in Canada. And that's another aspect of the story ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... which we don't have to deal with. But, nevertheless, it was recognized that this was never intended to be a real cure for cancer. It's just that some of the proponents began to believe their own stories, ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... their own fairy stories. And a lot of other people fell in behind them so that it turned out to be hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1970s and early eighties for cancer patients. Here in the United States, in addition to what the Tijuana clinics were bringing in. It was legal here for awhile as long as a physician signed an affidavit saying that the person could bring in a certain amount for his own use.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That is now run out, and it's illegal here now. But (unintelligible) started with that, and it was a good model for anyone starting in the field because it has all the characteristics of a pseudo-science and a swindle ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and a con. It is not a simple alternative. It has been falsified from the very beginning, and most of these are false from the beginning, if not intentionally so, then they are unintentionally false from the beginning. And what we are trying to do most recently here, and we'll get into this a little bit, is trying to find evidence that tells us with such certainty that the claims are false and the stuff cannot work and the method can't work. But doing clinical trials on this are unnecessary and a waste and lead to other secondary problems that are unexpected.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So my major interest is to try a case for many of these alternatives in the same way that we finally made the case against laetrile.<br /> <br /> === National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine&lt;small&gt;(16:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. I read a recent article that you wrote called ''The Alternative Universe''. This is on the <br /> [http://quackfiles.blogspot.com ''Quack Files Blogspot'']. <br /> Who runs that site, by the way? It's a good website. You may not be aware of it, but there's a host of scientific, medical articles, medicine articles on there. But, anyway, the article that you wrote was specifically about research, the <br /> [http://nccam.nih.gov National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine],<br /> and why it is a waste to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent to study modalities which we already know don't work. For example, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and a slew of other ones that are still popular and in use these days.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: That's basically what you are talking about, like laetrile's the same thing. We already know it doesn't work, so doing a clinical trial where we're giving it to patients who are sick, is unethical.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There are arguments all up the scale, from the very beginning of plausibility of it. For instance, with laetrile, it was implausible from the biochemical and pharmacological standpoint. It was impossible for it to work, and that's what the experts knew at the time, but no one believed them, except for other biochemists and pharmacologists.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But the general public, the press wouldn't believe them. They couldn't even get quoted in articles in the press, because the experts were simply discarded. So you could start on that end of the scale, the very basic scale, and then you could take a look and say &quot;What else is going on?&quot; Take a look at the way they're being promoted. It's being promoted inappropriately and in the wrong places, and they're not able to back up their claims. That's the next level on the scale. And then you can just skip over anything else in between and get to the most ridiculous part of this, which is what this article that I wrote was about, I think, which is trying to put the burden of proof on the medical, scientific establishment to disprove the use of these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And acupuncture's a very good case in point, because acupunture in traditional Chinese medicine was never used to treat a disease, because the Chinese never described diseases.<br /> <br /> S: Right, that's a modern concept. People don't realize that ...<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. <br /> <br /> S: ... before really the scientific model of medicine, people didn't think in terms of specific patho-physiological diseases. They thought everyone had their own particular illness.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: And usually conceived as being some life force or entity being out of balance.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But not diseases. So, of course, they couldn't frame their concept of how acupuncture might be working in terms of treating some specific biological disease. <br /> <br /> WS: Right. And so few people recognize this. I had to point this out very basically to the California Legislature the year before last, and had a very hard time trying to get the point across. I spent two hours with what's called the [[Little Hoover Commission|&lt;nowiki/&gt;]][[wikipedia:Little_Hoover_Commission|''Little Hoover Commission'']]'' ''here, explaining this. And they were so fascinated by it, it was so new to them, and these were not unintelligent people, very intelligent people, who were assigned by the state legislature in California to come up with a solution to the education of acupuncturists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And they spent more time listening to me than they did listening to anybody else because no one else had ever brought this up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And I brought up all the material I had learned from our buddies, who are associate editors and people we associate with, but I learned a lot from them. The amazing thing was that none of the legislatures had ever come to terms with this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The consultants in the Little Hoover Commission had not. The California Medical Association had no one who had ever given this kind of testimony, and it's so very basic, what you just said, Steve, that's the basis of the objection to acupuncture in the first place. There was no system of science or observation in China, since sixty to eighty percent of the complaints that people have when they go to a doctor or healer are either self-limited or psychogenic, most of them get better with time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Every doctor knows this, and we all know this now, but no one ever put that together with traditional Chinese medicine, because that was the reason that they all became self-deluded.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: They thought that what they were doing was working sixty to eighty percent of the time, and they were impressed with themselves. So they kept doing it, and repeating and repeating the errors.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So that's another level at which you can take a look at this whole situation and try to educate the public about it, which we are trying to do at the present time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: As you work your way up the scale even further, there has been a development in medicine called ''[[evidence-based medicine]]''. Evidenced-based medicine has developed clinical trials, randomized clinical trials to a degree that makes them much more &amp;ndash; when they are done properly they are much more accurate and can much more accurately predict whether something really works or not.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Or one thing works better than another. So evidence-based medicine has developed its own scale of rating various clinical trials to see how well the trial was done. And I won't go into that at the moment, but I think you could imagine how you could look at trial and were the patients randomized, were there blinds, blinding measures appropriate ...<br /> <br /> S: Was the outcome measures appropriate? Right.<br /> <br /> WS: Appropriate observations, appropriate statistics, and all these kinds of things that go into the analysis of a trial. So they've done pretty well with that. However, there are lots of holes, and what they don't have is any kind of a method for detecting fraud, or detecting fabrication. And so someone can make up a trial and publish it, and they have no way of knowing that it's made up. And, indeed, we have discovered some of these, and very few other people have. I must give credit to our crew of Steve and Bruce Lamm and Bob Emory and others who have been looking at these things and been able to detect where the frauds are. And the popular view is that we're not being listened to by University professors, because they have been deluded into thinking that the only way that you can really prove or disprove a method is by a clinical trial, and the only way they can improve is by tightening up the controls, and, still, there will be holes there and they can be defrauded. It's been going on today, and it's been going on for the past twenty years.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Bob, you had a question?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. I was going to say that you said that there were holes, there's no way to detect fraud, but isn't it also one of the other hallmarks of evidence-based medicine is duplication, duplication of the experiments in the trials to see if you come up with similar results. Wouldn't that shed light on the fact if there was fraud or gross errors?<br /> <br /> WS: It should. Ideally it does. There are two ways of tightening further. One is doing larger trials with larger numbers to increase the power of the study. The second is to have it reproduced by another group. But there are a couple of problems with this. Think about how long this would take. You spend say 30,000 dollars to 300,000 dollars doing a clinical trial with forty subjects and forty controls, which would give you an 85 percent power of being certain that your P-value will turn out to be correct. When you get a P-value of .05 or .01, which means chances are only one-in-twenty to one-in-a-hundred it could have been due to chance. Well suppose you made some systematic error in the setting up of the trial that you're unaware of. The first thing to do is for some other outfit to repeat the trial. While in the first place, most research grants are not given for specific repeats of someone else's work. They're mostly giving as grants for looking at in a different way or under different circumstances or for a different disorder. So you start to vary from that ideal repetition because of the way the granting agencies behave. I can only tell you that they think that the returns on the money that they will put into the grant will be much less if it's just for a repeat of something that's already in the literature. So a systematic error, unless it's repeated exactly the same way &amp;ndash; unless its trial is repeated the same way, a systematic error can be repeated, and nobody even knows it's there. That's number one. Number two, it took six months to a year to write up the grant request in the first place. It took another year or two to gather the patients into the trial. Another year or two to observe them &amp;ndash; maybe five years to observe them to see what the results are, and then another year to assimilate the data, write it up, and another six months to a year to get the paper accepted, because it goes through reviews, rejections, and the average rejection rate is two rejections per paper. So already you've got the work that's extended out from the ideal of about a year where you'd like to really know that's when you'd like to know what's really going on to five to maybe ten years before results are even published, and then start the repeats. And suppose you do get some outfit to repeat your work exactly the same way? Well, unless there's someone like our group out there looking for all these systematic errors and looking for something that could be wrong, you're going to have another five years to ten years before you have the answer. Now we're up to fifteen to twenty years. Meantime, these things are being marketed, and they're being talked up on websites and in books and on radio programs on anywhere else, and making their way into medical schools as part of alternative medicine instruction, and so forth, and some of these things get lives of their own, and it may be decades before they're disproved. That's the problem, and not only that, but it takes five or ten of these trials to be able to prove or disprove within some degree of certainty that something works or doesn't work, because each trial then is looking at a slightly different angle.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And just not a true replication. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Now, of course, all of this, (unintelligible) for one second, all of this of course applies to any modality that we care to study, even legitimate scientific plausible modalities. But I think that the key difference is within conventional scientific medicine, practitioners tend to be much more conservative. We don't tend to jump on the bandwagon of one study, but rather wait for a consensus of a few trials to come out, wait for the replication. We take a more skeptical eye towards any new therapeutic claims. It's certainly true that sometimes modalities may become incorporated into our practice, and then later studies contradict or show that it does work, but then we abandoned them. We get rid of the ones that don't work. In the alternative medicine world, there is never, ever a case where an alternative medicine proponent will come to the conclusion that any modality doesn't work. It simply does not exist for them.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. I've never found one either.<br /> <br /> S: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Weil Andrew Weil] has never, ever, ever, condemned any alternative modality as not working.<br /> <br /> E: And the media loves him. Loves him!<br /> <br /> S: Oh they love him. He's the guru of the century. In your article you point out that the National Center after ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars has not proven anything to be ineffective, which is absurd in the scientific medical world.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There have been a few advances. We were making this point up until about a year ago. Within the past year or two there have been some exceptions to that, and one is Andrew Weil has condemned [[wikipedia:Chelation_therapy|chelation therapy]].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, that's good.<br /> <br /> WS: That's one. But that's about it. Of all the hundreds of alternatives ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... that's the only one I know that he won't say works. Or says doesn't work.<br /> <br /> === Echinacea &lt;small&gt;(29:44)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: The second exception is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinacea echinacea], and after the last two trials the [[wikipedia:National_Center_for_Complementary_and_Integrative_Health|National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine]] head has finally made a statement that it shouldn't be used ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... and stopped research on it. However, he got a letter from the industry. I forget which industrial group this was ...<br /> <br /> S: &quot;He&quot; being [https://nccih.nih.gov/about/offices/od/bio.htm Stephen Straus], the head of the National Center.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Right. He got a letter very recently from the supplement industry telling him he was wrong about this and should ...<br /> <br /> S: Recant his ... <br /> <br /> WS: ... reject what he said, because he did exactly that, and he took back what he said, and put in a specific statement saying &quot;More studies are needed.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: More studies.<br /> <br /> WS: Because they didn't use the dose that was recommended. And for reasons like that. That's what the Council on Nutrition had claimed, and they sent a letter to the editor of the New England Journal, also, and our leader, Stephen Straus, of the National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine actually bowed to these people in the industry and withdrew his previous statement saying that echinacea didn't work, and came out with this mealy-mouth statement. Now I might add that my article in the New England Journal that was regarding that last clinical trial, made the point that there was no historical reason that anyone can find to indicate that it should be used in colds and flus.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: In other words, Native Americans had used it for at least thirteen to twenty-one different uses, including an inhalation of its smoke, use of echinacea as a compress, and all sorts of other &amp;ndash; and use as a local application for a painful tooth and a sore throat, but never was their use in a viral type illness or a feverish illness. And all the primary information that we consulted, and I consulted at least fifteen textbooks on this, and also the original text that related what the original Indians had told the traders.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The American and French and Spanish traders. Never was there a claim for that. The claim came from one Swiss and one German homeopath and quack who saw this material. It's a long story and will be published in our journal, but what they did was they got somewhat deluded by one fellows' trip to South Dakota and a talk with a medicine man's son, and came back and made it up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: He actually invented it in Germany, and marketed it as a cold cure.<br /> <br /> S: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> WS: That's how it became popular in the United States. There was no basis for researching it at all!<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: And of course that was completely ignored by the letters to the editor and ignored by National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So this gives you a little idea of what we are up against here.<br /> <br /> === Alternative Medicine Culture &lt;small&gt;(33:11)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Let me back up just a minute because, while I and my colleagues have been dealing with this issue for a long time, for many years, struggling really to find a way in my opinion to really get across to the public, to regulators, to educators, what it is we care about. I think that we get bogged down in terminology like &quot;scientific medicine,&quot; &quot;evidence-based medicine,&quot; et cetera. And the alternative medicine crowd I think have really learned over the years to expertly use terminology to their advantage. They really play that game very well. But honestly, when you break it down, I think what we're talking about is some very basic principles. The first being that medicine should be safe and effective. I think this is sort of a common ground that everyone can agree on. That it's inefficient, unethical, improper to use treatments which either don't work or which are unsafe. Although you'd be amazed at how difficult it is some times to get the alternative medicine people to agree to that. We further believe that over the last hundred, hundred and fifty years we've had some accumulative process of figuring out the best way to know what works and to know what is safe, and that these are really &amp;ndash; again, there's no magic to this. I think people use the term &quot;science&quot; as if it's a magic wand. Basically, all we're talking about is intellectual integrity, fairly accounting for the evidence, using methods which are appropriate and legitimate, using valid logic in assessing claims, using appropriate statistics. That's it! That's all that we're really advocating. There's not really a big ideological or philosophical issue at stake here. It's really just an issue of quality. And when you dig down deep into any of these alternative modalities, what you find is that intellectually, they're extremely lacking. Either they're outright fraud, or they do not account for the evidence, or they are employing grossly invalid logic, or all of the above. Would you agree with the basic assessment?<br /> <br /> WS: Very good! I sure do.<br /> <br /> S: We say not that we're against all alternative or against some kind of artificial category, we think that &quot;medicine is medicine&quot;. There is one medicine, and it should have the best quality possible. You brought up evidenced-based medicine. That is just I think is just the latest iteration of mainstream medicine's dedication to again this sort of excellence and quality in medicine, in health care. But you're right in that it has some holes in it, and I think the big one that we haven't talked about is the fact that it doesn't consider plausibility or prior probability.<br /> <br /> WS: Mmmmm.<br /> <br /> S: So it assess empirical evidence essentially in an intellectual vacuum, as if we don't have a hundred and fifty years of biology and medicine behind us, which I think is just utter folly. Wouldn't you agree with that?<br /> <br /> WS: Well I sure do. We've been bouncing this one back and forth for I think the past four years or five.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And trying to figure out a good way to approach this so that the medical journals would accept what we had to say and not reject it off-hand ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... as offensive as they so often do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The other thing that was sort of implied in what we've been talking about so far, but I think it's worth talking about for a few minutes, is what really is the size and scope of the alternative medicine phenomenon in our culture. Clearly it has risen to higher prominence in society, but my sense is that the public has been led to believe, essentially by a sensationalistic and credulous media, that there is a paradigm shift &amp;ndash; I always hear that term being used &amp;ndash; within scientific medicine, with science itself, and that it is being increasingly accepting of alternative modalities. But I just do not see that. I do not believe that that is the case. What I ...<br /> <br /> P: You hear that about scientific community, not the public?<br /> <br /> S: About both. About both.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: But yes, the claim is absolutely being made about the scientific community. In fact what we see when we survey health-care professionals et cetera &amp;ndash; and, again, I work inside an academic institution, so I can tell you from my direct experience is that ninety-five, ninety-six percent of scientists and health-care professionals think it's bunk. They just don't care about it. It's below their radar. They think it's a cultural pop fad that is not worthy of their time and attention. They may out of some misguided attempt at political correctness they may not condemn it in harsh terms, but they certainly don't think anything of it. There's only about four to five percent of practitioners who are really enamored of and dedicated &amp;ndash; really on ideological and philosophical grounds &amp;ndash; to these spiritual, new-age or anti-scientific or unscientific modalities, and they're the ones who are making all the noise. And they're trying to make it sound like there's a revolution going on inside medicine. It's really a false revolution, but the media is buying it, and they're selling this fiction to the public.<br /> <br /> P: Why? What is the allure of the media? What attracts them to it so powerfully?<br /> <br /> WS: &quot;Man bites dog&quot;. Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news. It's the unusual happening instead of the usual happening.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: That's what makes news.<br /> <br /> S: It's a little also counter-culture and anti-establishment.<br /> <br /> WS: I wish I had begun to tabulate the number of reporters I've talked to over the past ten or twenty years, who admitted to me that they thought that this whole thing was bunk, and yet wrote up their articles as if there's really something there.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> WS: And I wish I could have just tabulated the number, because it just from my memory it's about ninety, ninety-five percent of them.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: What?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's my experience, too, although I will have to say that reporters I think tell you what they think you want to hear as a method of opening you up.<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I don't know if that really reflects their views, or if they're just buttering us up, because they know they're interviewing &quot;the skeptic.&quot; So &quot;Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical, too.&quot; so, &quot;Let me hear it, tell me what you really think.&quot;<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I agree that in general I think I can get a sense when people are BSing me, or if they're genuinely skeptical. If they could really talk the talk. And I've had that experience, too, where you deal with either a producer or a reporter or whatever who appears to be by all accounts fairly skeptical, but they produce a credulous piece. It's usually out of naivety, just unfamiliarity with the topic at hand or because they believe that they're dealing with a &quot;fluff piece&quot;, and therefore they don't have to.<br /> <br /> P: But I'm sure there are a large number of people who author articles that they don't believe in just because they think ...<br /> <br /> S: Sure.<br /> <br /> P: ... they look good in print that it'll please their editors ...<br /> <br /> E: That's their job.<br /> <br /> P: ... et cetera, et cetera. Right. It's their job. I believe that, a lot of them.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. My curiosity is: will the public acceptance of the presence of alternative medicine rise to the point where it will no longer be sensational, or will in fact we run through the cycle where the press will be interested in doing stories about the evils of alternative medicine? I don't know if that cycle is going to occur, but I'm watching and waiting to see if it does.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, it will take a slew of deaths related to alternative medicine that might turn people against it.<br /> <br /> S: Only celebrity deaths will help.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Like the baseball player that died.<br /> <br /> S: You have to kill off famous people, otherwise the public won't care.<br /> <br /> P: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> E: That baseball player that died, what was it, one year ago or two years ago. Ephedrin?<br /> <br /> S: Of [[ephedra]].<br /> <br /> E: Ephedra.<br /> <br /> S: Definitely it was helpful. Although &amp;ndash; and the FDA &amp;ndash; this was the one and only &quot;supplement&quot; that the FDA was able to ban under the ridiculous dietary supplement and health education act of 1994. And in fact there are already calls to have that reversed because the industry is claiming that the FDA, even though it took them six years to compile the evidence that ephedra was unhealthy, was too risky to be marketed, the industry is now claiming that they didn't make their case. Again, they're using the dose issue, that the ...<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... marketing at a lower dose could potentially be safe.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't Peter &amp;ndash; sorry, Steve, I didn't mean to interrupt you.<br /> <br /> S: Go ahead.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't [[Peter Sellers]] and [[wikipedia:Andy_Kaufman|Andy Kauffman]] have [[psychic surgery]]?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: That didn't help them very much.<br /> <br /> WS: They also went for laetrile.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, really.<br /> <br /> WS: Andy Kauffman did. [[Steve McQueen]].<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Down to the border clinics across the border in Mexico. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And Peter Sellers had chelation therapy, in addition to the psychic surgery.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, he did.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. That's right. Now I remember.<br /> <br /> === Chelation Therapy &lt;small&gt;(42:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Chelation therapy, again, it's a legitimate treatment for heavy-metal poisoning, but there is a small subset of dedicated practitioners who are using it to treat &amp;ndash; prevent heart attacks and strokes. Decades of evidence has shown that it doesn't work, and any putative mechanism by which it might work has been proven to be wrong. Again, really within ethical, scientific medicine, it's use for vascular diseases has been discarded. There are just some people who will not be persuaded by the evidence.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. And there's a side issue here which is most important, and very difficult to gather data on this, but the doctors who use chelation are obviously &amp;ndash; I think you have to invent a new term for it, and I call it intellectually with specific intellectual deficit. Intellectually deficient in specific areas. In other words they can function very well maintaining their bank accounts and even repair their cars and may even write glorious novels, but when it comes to this one specific area of chelation for cardiovascular disease, they completely lose their heads. <br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: These people are dangerous, and chelation has been a major reason for physicians having their licenses revoked or suspended ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... over the past thirty, forty years. These are bad doctors.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: The best way the boards could catch them was to catch them giving chelation. Now, unfortunately, there've been some movements in the legal field which have defanged the boards, taken away their ability to prosecute these physicians on the basis of this one action.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And these chelationists, it's practically all they do, so you can't catch them doing other things. You have to catch them ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... from some patient who's died or had a bad complication. The problem is they give so little of the stuff that it can't possibly work, and it doesn't produce any side effects or toxicity in the highly dilute form that's given. So they get off doing it, and the quirks in the law and the quirks in the board policies that have been recently changed are responsible for its continuation, actually.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now <br /> <br /> WS: The Doctors, the whole system has been changed around chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> S: That's right. What you are basically talking about is a class of laws called the &quot;health care freedom&quot; laws, basically, and these kinds of things are regulated on a state by state basis. Each state has their own department of health or their health board that regulates licensing health care professionals and physicians and also disciplining them. And, traditionally, a state health board can discipline or even remove the license of a physician if they were practicing sub-standard medical care. The burden of proof was on the state, but if the state could prove through appropriate use of expert witnesses and evidence, et cetera, that a physician was practicing bad medicine, what we call sub-standard care, they could be disciplined. They could have their license taken away. This is a measure of protecting the public from fraudulent or just bad doctors, who are practicing bad medicine. Well, in the legal and cultural milieu that we find ourselves now, under the banner of &quot;health care freedom&quot;, a number of states have passed health care freedom laws, which specifically state &amp;ndash; there's different formulations, but the bottom line is that any practitioner who is practicing &quot;alternative medicine&quot;, which is kind of an artificial category, but something similar to &quot;complementary, alternative medicine&quot; can not be disciplined for practicing sub-standard care. In other words, they are not held to any standard of care.<br /> <br /> E: Freedom to commit fraud, basically.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, absolutely. The state of Florida has this law &amp;ndash; I was involved recently a couple of years ago in a case where there was a neurologist who was practising fraudulent, horribly bad medicine, and it's clear, to me, that he just made up his treatment, just designed to make money out of patients. We proved to a legal certainty, the judge decided that he was indeed practising sub-standard care, but then he appealed on the basis that what he was doing was alternative, and under the Florida statute got off scott-free, and is now free to commit quackery and fraud against patients because of this law. And this whole movement is very closely tied to the whole chelation therapy movement, the freedom for these doctors to prescribe their chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. It is an aspect of this changing paradigm. That concept actually developed in the late ninteen-seventies that predicted the paradigm would change, so that all of these things would then become appropriate therapies has changed, but it's only changed within certain segments, including the legal part of societies. It certainly hasn't changed science, at all.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because, as you said before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: But it has changed the practicalities of it, the practices, and some of the public perception.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So what there is, is an increasing disparity, and increasing disconnect between science, what scientists and scientific practitioners believe and do, and what the law states the regulation of medicine and also what the public thinks is really going on.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: A broading gap between science and the public is always, always a bad thing. In this arena, we're talking about direct health effects, not some abstract, down-the-road danger of believing in silliness, but some decisions that are made directly and have an immediate impact on people's health. Sometimes even to the point of premature death. We see that all the time, certainly.<br /> <br /> WS: Yup. Another aspect to this has been what I don't think the public has any recognition of this or realization of it, and very few people in the field of medicine recognize what's going on either is that when the claim is made that increasing numbers of people are going for alternative medicine, and it's being more and more accepted, the reaction of physicians is to say &quot;What are we doing wrong?&quot; ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... number one, and number two is to come to an accomodation with it. Instead of opposing it, they say: well, we've done something wrong, it's our fault, and so what can we do? We must get along with the patients who believe in this ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and want to do it, and we must help them, and the interests of their lives and their happiness ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... regardless of how we feel about it, and regardless of our consciences and what our rationality tells us. And you get the same reaction in medical literature among medical editors and journals. An article, for instance, that opposes, that presents information opposing the use of these unscientific methods will usually be rejected. There are very few articles in the literature that have been accepted that propose that physicians reject them as a group or as individuals or that try to work with a patient to discourage them from using these things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That fascinates me.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Fascinates me greatly, as as matter of fact.<br /> <br /> S: It's become politically incorrect.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Which is the enemy of reason, rationality, and science, and basically you're saying that you have some ideology or political concern which trumps evidence, reason, logic, and science. And, again, it has immediate and very severe detrimental effect on the public health.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: To my lay mind the thing that would seem to have the most profound negative impact on these alternative modalities is simply their lack of efficacy, right? If it doesn't work, who's going to use it? Or more to the point, who's going to pay for it? And yet it doesn't seem to have any impact at all, and I guess that's because ...<br /> <br /> B: Human psychology.<br /> <br /> P: ... of placebo, self-limiting disease, and the fact that they're often taking these alternative modalities along with evidence-based medicine, I think.<br /> <br /> WS: Well, that's interesting, because the perception of the patient shifts, but it starts out with this usually deluded or self-deluded recognition that I'm doing this for my cancer, say of the prostate, and I seem to be doing very well (I just got radiation of course, and my PSA level is going down), but I'm on all these supplements, and I intend to stay on the supplements because I want to cover all bases. And eventually I get to believe my PSA keeps going down, it must be the supplements. That's what I'm doing. This is very powerful. And then when the PSA starts to rise again, well the reason must be that I'm taking the wrong supplements, so I'll change. Or I'm not taking enough of it, or I skip too many doses. And that kind of rationalization comes in. The socking in of belief, the power of that belief, is such that people don't make the right decision. They don't make rational decisions ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... based on what they truly have observed. They make the decision based on what they think they would want to have happened.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And what they want to have happened.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And the psychologists have studied this phenomenon for many years, and that's why Steve and I are enthralled with psychology brethern ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... who have laid these things out. And there's book after book that there must be five or ten at least well-written textbooks on this matter that are taught in advanced and upper-division psychology classes, and that we use all the time in our teaching. The psychologists have figure all this stuff out. But even though you can deal with it intellectually, individual patients, when they are faced with these personal problems, fail to recognize that what they even may have learned through a textbook and through a course and lecture, they fail to be able to apply it to themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The bottom line is, and again this is well, well described and very thoroughly understood, is that there is always an almost complete disconnect between what patients, what the public perceives and what's really going on in terms of their illness or their response to treatment. There's a host of psychological mechanisms at work that overwhelm any perception of reality. Scientists know this. We all know this. That's why you need to do carefully designed studies. Studies, when a study is &quot;carefully designed&quot;, what that means is it is designed to eliminate the effect of all of these biases that we know are there. Anecdotal evidence, the reason why anecdotal evidence is pejorative, is because it's not controlling for all of this variety, this host of psychological and biasing factors. Anecdotal evidence is worse than worthless, because it tends to lead one to conclusions they wish to be true. It has almost no relationship to the actual truth. And that's really a critical point of understanding between our position, the scientific and rational position, and alternative medicine proponents, is they just don't get that. They don't want to get that. They're happy to rely on anecdotal evidence because you can prove anything with it, because, again, it leads you happily to whatever conclusions you wish to be true.<br /> <br /> WS: That's so right.<br /> <br /> S: It's critical for us to make that point to the public, that the fact that somethings seem to work is meaningless. It's absolutely meaningless. I can't tell you how many times people come to me &amp;ndash; and we hear this, too, in all areas of skepticism, &quot;Well how do you explain this? A friend of mine had this disease and he took this bizarre treatment, and he got better. How do you explain that?&quot; Well, that's anecdotal; it can't be explained. But it's worthless as evidence. It just runs totally contrary to basic human psychology, I guess. <br /> <br /> B: And Steve, don't forget, and I'm sure you didn't forget, but also it's worth pointing out that science-based medicine also helps prevent biases on the part not only of the patient but of the experimenter, the scientists themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. Every one involved needs to be &amp;ndash; there needs to be precautions taken against bias. The observer, the person conducting the trial, the subject, and the analysis of the data at the back end. Any time there is a potential for bias to get into the final analysis of the data, it will be there, so you have to design it in such a way either that it can't influence the results or are averaged out over large numbers of subjects.<br /> <br /> WS: We want to both praise the doing of appropriate randomized clinical trials, while at the same time try to point out the defects.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The things they can't really cover, at least not yet been designed to cover.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But we think that's correctable.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: I'm convinced that bringing in, as you've said, prior probability, which we haven't talked about much, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: ... but that can actually be factored in quantitatively as a choice of numbers ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and plausibility, and factor in considerations for the possibility of fabrication and fraud. We have a list of things to look for that simply haven't been incorporated yet.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: We're all for evidenced-based medicine or for sure tightening it up and recognizing its limitations, as well.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. In fact, again, scientist practitioners consider prior plausibility on a day-to-day basis. <br /> <br /> WS: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We know biology. We know how things work, basically. We know the limitations on our knowledge of how things work, and whenever a new treatment comes down the pike, the instinct of the scientists or the clinician is to think &quot;How could that work?&quot; Does that make any sense given everything else that we think we know about biology and medicine. That's the <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience consilience] of medicine. And I think that would solve the problem to a large degree if any claim to knowledge has to be accounted for within the framework of everything that's already been established to whatever degree it has been established. You can't take some new idea in an absolute vacuum as if we don't know anything.<br /> <br /> WS: Sure. As a matter of fact it comes into play the moment you start to make up a clinical trial or apply for a grant.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: Because you can't make up a study of intestinal flu in ants ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and try apply it to humans.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: What on earth are you talking about?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because there is no plausibility there. So it's actually done repeatedly. The problem in alternative medicine is that almost all claims in humans are now plausibile. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Right. They want to change the rules. They want to change the rules.<br /> <br /> WS: They are changing them, that's right. They are changing the rules.<br /> <br /> S: Plausibility is equated to closed mindedness.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They dismiss all of it. You make any kind of assessment of prior probability or plausibility, they interpret that as being close-minded and dismissive.<br /> <br /> WS: Exactly. It's up to us to make the case to bring it in in a convincing way.<br /> <br /> S: Well, it's an uphill battle.<br /> <br /> WS: It sure is.<br /> <br /> S: We'll keep plugging away. Well I hate to say this but our time once again is up. It always goes by so quickly. Dr. Sampson, again, we appreciate having you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thanks for joining us.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> WS: It was my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.<br /> <br /> S: Great! I hope to have you back again in the future. We just barely scratched the surface. There's so much more.<br /> <br /> E: There's so much. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Perry, Evan, Bob &amp;ndash; thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}}<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_21&diff=9612 2015-02-01T04:32:25Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Weeping Icons (5: 00) */ Spelling and links</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |categories = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 21<br /> |episodeDate = 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File: LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y <br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = WS: {{w|Wallace Sampson}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-07-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Today is December 7th, 2005. With me today as always are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Good-evening<br /> <br /> S: ... Perry DeAngelis<br /> <br /> P: I'll have to put down my copy of the Psychic Sasquatch to join you, but I shall.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, thanks for the sacrifice. You can get back to it later. And again as always Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Hello everyone<br /> <br /> S: Guys, thanks for joining me tonight.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: So today is December 7th, a day that will live in infamy, right? The Pearl Harbor Day.<br /> <br /> B: That's right.<br /> <br /> E: Pearl Harbor Day<br /> <br /> B: I remember that, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I'll never forget that.<br /> <br /> S: We will remember all of the Americans who lost their lives and limbs on that infamous day in 1941.<br /> <br /> E: Changed the world. Changed the world forever.<br /> <br /> S: When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor<br /> <br /> E: When the Germans bombed &amp;ndash; yes, there's evidence to prove that.<br /> <br /> S: So we have an excellent guest on our show tonight. Wallace Sampson ...<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> S: ... who will be joining us in just a few minutes. <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Intelligent Design Course Withdrawn (1: 13)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> But first there's just a couple of quick news items. First an update on our last show. We had reported that the University of Kansas was planning a course entitled ''Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies''. The course was to be put on by <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mirecki Professor Paul Mirecki]. <br /> We discussed the fact that the University, trying to retain some shred of scientific credibility and prestige is trying to do anything to counteract the fact that the Kansas State School Board for a second time is voting to either limit the teaching of evolution or promote the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas public schools.<br /> <br /> Well, unfortunately the course has now been withdrawn by the University of Kansas. The apparent reason for doing this is the fact that Paul Mirecki, again the Professor who was going to run the course, made some indiscreet, anti-religious remarks. Actually, it was in an email to students. And he was slapped on the wrist by the University. He had to formally apologize. He said &quot;I made a mistake in not leading by example in this student organisation email forum the importance of discussing differing view points in a civil and respectful manner,&quot; he said. The Chancellor, <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hemenway Robert Hemenway], <br /> referred to his comments as &quot;repugnant and vile&quot;. Whenever you make any comment that is insensitive, it always seems that the University has to condemn it in the most extreme language they could possibly muster.<br /> <br /> P: Do we have any idea of the nature of the comments?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, lets see. He said he was mocking Christian Fundamentalists.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's pretty broad.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think he called them &amp;ndash; referred to Religious Conservatives as &quot;Fundies&quot;, and said ...<br /> <br /> P: &quot;Fundies&quot;?<br /> <br /> S: ... and said &quot;a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a nice slap in their big fat face.&quot; That's it.<br /> <br /> P: That's pretty horrific. I mean that's really, really (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> S: Obviously he shouldn't of done that. He's a Professor, and ...<br /> <br /> P: I agree<br /> <br /> S: ... he's teaching a controversial course to specifically, to highlight the intellectual superiority of scientific honesty above religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. And he totally muddied it with these unnecessary comments.<br /> <br /> P: It's true. I mean he shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: It's just unfortunate. It's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> P: He shouldn't have done it.<br /> <br /> S: Although I have the sense that the University was happy to have an excuse to cancel it and get out of the controversy. They should have stuck to their guns. They should have made him apologize but not pull the course. I don't see why they had to do that.<br /> <br /> E: Right, sounds like, I don't know, an excuse. Maybe they were never too hot on the course to begin with, and it's just a door that opened to allow it to be gone. <br /> <br /> S: It's unfortunate. He should have known that by doing this he was putting himself in the limelight as it were, and he should have really been on his best behavior.<br /> <br /> P: Cancelling the course still seems a little extreme.<br /> <br /> S: I think so. I think it's a little excessive. So we'll keep you updated on this raging culture war. The judge has yet to make a decision in the case. You'll be sure to hear about it on the Skeptics' Guide when a decision comes down regarding the constitutionalilty of requiring teaching intelligent design in Dover Pennsylvania Public schools.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> === Weeping Icons (5: 00)&lt;small&gt;&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Another item that came to our attention this week was: there is a new sighting of a weeping Virgin Mary icon. Now Bob, you brought this article to our attention.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I read a little bit about this. As reported in the <br /> [http://www.sacbee.com Sacramento Bee]<br /> there's a humble &amp;ndash; described as a humble Vietnamese Catholic Martyr's Church. There's an outdoor statue of Mary that has become very popular with hundreds and hundreds of visitors coming by, rain or shine, since late November. Apparently there's a red streak running from the corner of her left eye, and that has been causing quite a stir. People have been coming and praying and thinking it's a miracle. <br /> <br /> S: They think she's crying blood?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, essentially, I mean red streak, I mean you've got to think, oh yeah, it must be blood, miraculous bleeding.<br /> <br /> E: Simple, simple test, simple test could...<br /> <br /> B: It says here that the Priest wiped the streak away on November 9th but then it reappeared on November 20th, and many viewed it as tears of blood being shed, of course.<br /> <br /> S: Right<br /> <br /> B: National media attention, many &amp;ndash; lots of crowds, &quot;I believe it's a miracle,&quot; said Florence Chempako. And I was very nicely surprised to see [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] quoted in this article. He said ...<br /> <br /> S: Of course<br /> <br /> B: He says that he wrote &quot;Looking for a miracle and the red streak as a hoax but not without possible value. Such events often can draw believers and non-believers to the church&quot;. Makes a lot of sense.<br /> <br /> E: Huh, huh.<br /> <br /> B: With national media attention and hundreds of people visiting everyday for weeks and weeks, I am sure they've seen a lot of new members.<br /> <br /> S: Even if it turns out to be a hoax, the purpose was served.<br /> <br /> B: Right. It's a win--win. It's a totally win--win situation for them. And it says here that he took issue with the church. He described it as a clumsy, obvious hoax and had issues with the church for not acting quickly to test the substance.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: It says here that he's quoted as saying: &quot;If the statue is a fraud or a hoax, or even just a mistake, it should be determined, and that should be that,&quot; Nickell said. &quot;If it's a fake then it should be repudiated&quot;. And then, Steve, they actually had a quote from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_and_Lorraine_Warren Lorrainne Warren].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, really. They tracked her down.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, a Conneticut investigator of paranormal events for over 50 years admitted to a &quot;believe first&quot; approach. &quot;Until you can disprove it, look at it as real,&quot; Warren said. Which I thought was ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's about right.<br /> <br /> B: ... not surprising but still an interesting perspective.<br /> <br /> S: Now there have been cases similar to this in the past where they did test the blood, and they found it to match the type of blood and in fact DNA match to one of the people in the church or in the home.<br /> <br /> E: Hm.<br /> <br /> S: And the comment was &quot;Well, that just proves how miraculous it is. God can use any blood he wants to create this miracle&quot;.<br /> <br /> E: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Again you can't falsify faith-based beliefs. Which, again, why these kind of things are a win-win. You know the church can never really lose, because the true believers will continue to believe regardless of whatever evidence comes down the pike later. So that was it, that was the only skeptical items that peeked above the radar this week. so we want to leave plenty of time for our guest. So we'll go to him now.<br /> <br /> == Interview with &quot;Wallace Sampson, MD&quot; &lt;small&gt;(8:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: So joining us tonight is Dr. Wallace Sampson. Dr. Sampson is an outspoken critic of unscientific, fringe, and bizarre health claims. He is the editor and chief of the <br /> [http://www.sram.org ''Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine''].<br /> And I, your host, is an associate editor of that journal with Dr. Sampson. He is also on the board of directors of the <br /> [http://www.ncahf.org National Council against Health Fraud],<br /> the author of numerous articles and reviews dealing with a range of issues involving science and medicine. He's an Oncologist by training and is a clinical Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Stanford University. Wallace Sampson, thank you for joining us on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> WS: My pleasure.<br /> <br /> S: So, let's go ahead and just start talking about alternative medicine &amp;ndash; complementary, alternative medicine. Give us your view of what this is all about, what role it's playing in modern health care, and what we as skeptical, concerned citizens should think about it.<br /> <br /> WS: Well taking a somewhat historical view of this gives you some very surprising information. I am old enough that I have seen this thing grow, like weeds under my feet. When I first started in this, there were very few so-called alternatives, and we could keep track of them. We knew who the proponents were, we were &amp;ndash; &quot;we&quot; meaning the people and my colleagues who taught me about this &amp;ndash; were called in as consultants and witnesses in hearings and trials. And we were regarded as experts in this whole field. We held offices, official offices in the states' governments, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and were witnesses for the federal attorneys general, and were held in fairly high regard within the scientific community. It was a little niche of interest for most of us, because we were a combination of PhD &amp;ndash; usually bio-chemists &amp;ndash; and MDs with an interest in Physiology and Biochemistry and Pharmacology. <br /> <br /> === Laetrile &lt;small&gt;(10:38)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: Well, when I first got interested in it, it was over a significant and obviously fraudulent material <br /> [[wikipedia:Laetrile#Laetrile|''laetrile'']], ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that was in the early 1970's.<br /> <br /> S: That was the first issue that drew you into this?<br /> <br /> WS: Right. I was trained as a hematologist and oncologist and was a practicing hemog, as we called ourselves, and had patients disappearing from my practice. A few of them ended up, I found out, in clinics across the border from San Diego in Tijuana getting laetrile.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and that interested me, so I looked about and got some literature about it, and I tried to figure out what this stuff really was, and I became very confused, because the material I received had a degree of scientific panache and logic to it. So I really didn't know why it was not approved of ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... because if everything the proponents said was true looked like it might be pretty good. Well, in fact, everything the proponents said was false. Not only was it a misinterpretation of things, they actually made it up in other words it was an intentional fraud.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So just for some background, laetrile is a putative cancer cure that was studied for a time in the late sixties and seventies. Basically found to be completely ineffective &amp;ndash; proven ineffective, discarded by ethical scientific medicine, but has had a life after that in these specialty clinics that offer laetrile and essentially claim that the medical establishment is lying to the public about the effectiveness of laetrile. <br /> <br /> B: Did they find some other use for laetrile, completely unrelated to its original claims, something that &quot;just, oh wow, it happens to have an effect on some unrelated condition,&quot; or am I just misremembering that?<br /> <br /> S: Is there any legitimate medical use for laetrile, even outside the realm of cancer?<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There's a legitimate use as a poison, as a matter of fact.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> WS: It's a well known poison of domestic animals in Africa and in some other countries where these were the compounds in laetrile which come from various plants, including maize, and roots that out of which they make poi, casaba root, and a lot of other staples, because it contains twelve percent cyanide by weight.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But it's all natural, it must be good.<br /> <br /> WS: It's all natural.<br /> <br /> S: All natural poison.<br /> <br /> WS: There's a significant public health problem, because the cattle in Africa are poisoned by it. They get thyroid poisoning, become hypothyroid. They get cyanide chronic poisoning with neurological changes and staggering that looks like mad cow disease, and a host of other problems. But these kinds of effects seem not to bother the proponents, and they didn't, of course, mention them in their ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... advertisements and their claims. It bothered the state officials and the public health officials. Anyway, that's laetrile, and yes, it did develop a life of its own. It made the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Life magazines.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: It was a major scandal, because what it really was was a front for a fraudulent stock swindle on the Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges over which people were sentenced to long prison terms in Canada. And that's another aspect of the story ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... which we don't have to deal with. But, nevertheless, it was recognized that this was never intended to be a real cure for cancer. It's just that some of the proponents began to believe their own stories, ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... their own fairy stories. And a lot of other people fell in behind them so that it turned out to be hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1970s and early eighties for cancer patients. Here in the United States, in addition to what the Tijuana clinics were bringing in. It was legal here for awhile as long as a physician signed an affidavit saying that the person could bring in a certain amount for his own use.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That is now run out, and it's illegal here now. But (unintelligible) started with that, and it was a good model for anyone starting in the field because it has all the characteristics of a pseudo-science and a swindle ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and a con. It is not a simple alternative. It has been falsified from the very beginning, and most of these are false from the beginning, if not intentionally so, then they are unintentionally false from the beginning. And what we are trying to do most recently here, and we'll get into this a little bit, is trying to find evidence that tells us with such certainty that the claims are false and the stuff cannot work and the method can't work. But doing clinical trials on this are unnecessary and a waste and lead to other secondary problems that are unexpected.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So my major interest is to try a case for many of these alternatives in the same way that we finally made the case against laetrile.<br /> <br /> === National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine&lt;small&gt;(16:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. I read a recent article that you wrote called ''The Alternative Universe''. This is on the <br /> [http://quackfiles.blogspot.com ''Quack Files Blogspot'']. <br /> Who runs that site, by the way? It's a good website. You may not be aware of it, but there's a host of scientific, medical articles, medicine articles on there. But, anyway, the article that you wrote was specifically about research, the <br /> [http://nccam.nih.gov National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine],<br /> and why it is a waste to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent to study modalities which we already know don't work. For example, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and a slew of other ones that are still popular and in use these days.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: That's basically what you are talking about, like laetrile's the same thing. We already know it doesn't work, so doing a clinical trial where we're giving it to patients who are sick, is unethical.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There are arguments all up the scale, from the very beginning of plausibility of it. For instance, with laetrile, it was implausible from the biochemical and pharmacological standpoint. It was impossible for it to work, and that's what the experts knew at the time, but no one believed them, except for other biochemists and pharmacologists.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But the general public, the press wouldn't believe them. They couldn't even get quoted in articles in the press, because the experts were simply discarded. So you could start on that end of the scale, the very basic scale, and then you could take a look and say &quot;What else is going on?&quot; Take a look at the way they're being promoted. It's being promoted inappropriately and in the wrong places, and they're not able to back up their claims. That's the next level on the scale. And then you can just skip over anything else in between and get to the most ridiculous part of this, which is what this article that I wrote was about, I think, which is trying to put the burden of proof on the medical, scientific establishment to disprove the use of these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And acupuncture's a very good case in point, because acupunture in traditional Chinese medicine was never used to treat a disease, because the Chinese never described diseases.<br /> <br /> S: Right, that's a modern concept. People don't realize that ...<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. <br /> <br /> S: ... before really the scientific model of medicine, people didn't think in terms of specific patho-physiological diseases. They thought everyone had their own particular illness.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: And usually conceived as being some life force or entity being out of balance.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But not diseases. So, of course, they couldn't frame their concept of how acupuncture might be working in terms of treating some specific biological disease. <br /> <br /> WS: Right. And so few people recognize this. I had to point this out very basically to the California Legislature the year before last, and had a very hard time trying to get the point across. I spent two hours with what's called the [[Little Hoover Commission|&lt;nowiki/&gt;]][[wikipedia:Little_Hoover_Commission|''Little Hoover Commission'']]'' ''here, explaining this. And they were so fascinated by it, it was so new to them, and these were not unintelligent people, very intelligent people, who were assigned by the state legislature in California to come up with a solution to the education of acupuncturists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And they spent more time listening to me than they did listening to anybody else because no one else had ever brought this up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And I brought up all the material I had learned from our buddies, who are associate editors and people we associate with, but I learned a lot from them. The amazing thing was that none of the legislatures had ever come to terms with this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The consultants in the Little Hoover Commission had not. The California Medical Association had no one who had ever given this kind of testimony, and it's so very basic, what you just said, Steve, that's the basis of the objection to acupuncture in the first place. There was no system of science or observation in China, since sixty to eighty percent of the complaints that people have when they go to a doctor or healer are either self-limited or psychogenic, most of them get better with time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Every doctor knows this, and we all know this now, but no one ever put that together with traditional Chinese medicine, because that was the reason that they all became self-deluded.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: They thought that what they were doing was working sixty to eighty percent of the time, and they were impressed with themselves. So they kept doing it, and repeating and repeating the errors.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So that's another level at which you can take a look at this whole situation and try to educate the public about it, which we are trying to do at the present time.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: As you work your way up the scale even further, there has been a development in medicine called ''[[evidence-based medicine]]''. Evidenced-based medicine has developed clinical trials, randomized clinical trials to a degree that makes them much more &amp;ndash; when they are done properly they are much more accurate and can much more accurately predict whether something really works or not.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Or one thing works better than another. So evidence-based medicine has developed its own scale of rating various clinical trials to see how well the trial was done. And I won't go into that at the moment, but I think you could imagine how you could look at trial and were the patients randomized, were there blinds, blinding measures appropriate ...<br /> <br /> S: Was the outcome measures appropriate? Right.<br /> <br /> WS: Appropriate observations, appropriate statistics, and all these kinds of things that go into the analysis of a trial. So they've done pretty well with that. However, there are lots of holes, and what they don't have is any kind of a method for detecting fraud, or detecting fabrication. And so someone can make up a trial and publish it, and they have no way of knowing that it's made up. And, indeed, we have discovered some of these, and very few other people have. I must give credit to our crew of Steve and Bruce Lamm and Bob Emory and others who have been looking at these things and been able to detect where the frauds are. And the popular view is that we're not being listened to by University professors, because they have been deluded into thinking that the only way that you can really prove or disprove a method is by a clinical trial, and the only way they can improve is by tightening up the controls, and, still, there will be holes there and they can be defrauded. It's been going on today, and it's been going on for the past twenty years.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Bob, you had a question?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. I was going to say that you said that there were holes, there's no way to detect fraud, but isn't it also one of the other hallmarks of evidence-based medicine is duplication, duplication of the experiments in the trials to see if you come up with similar results. Wouldn't that shed light on the fact if there was fraud or gross errors?<br /> <br /> WS: It should. Ideally it does. There are two ways of tightening further. One is doing larger trials with larger numbers to increase the power of the study. The second is to have it reproduced by another group. But there are a couple of problems with this. Think about how long this would take. You spend say 30,000 dollars to 300,000 dollars doing a clinical trial with forty subjects and forty controls, which would give you an 85 percent power of being certain that your P-value will turn out to be correct. When you get a P-value of .05 or .01, which means chances are only one-in-twenty to one-in-a-hundred it could have been due to chance. Well suppose you made some systematic error in the setting up of the trial that you're unaware of. The first thing to do is for some other outfit to repeat the trial. While in the first place, most research grants are not given for specific repeats of someone else's work. They're mostly giving as grants for looking at in a different way or under different circumstances or for a different disorder. So you start to vary from that ideal repetition because of the way the granting agencies behave. I can only tell you that they think that the returns on the money that they will put into the grant will be much less if it's just for a repeat of something that's already in the literature. So a systematic error, unless it's repeated exactly the same way &amp;ndash; unless its trial is repeated the same way, a systematic error can be repeated, and nobody even knows it's there. That's number one. Number two, it took six months to a year to write up the grant request in the first place. It took another year or two to gather the patients into the trial. Another year or two to observe them &amp;ndash; maybe five years to observe them to see what the results are, and then another year to assimilate the data, write it up, and another six months to a year to get the paper accepted, because it goes through reviews, rejections, and the average rejection rate is two rejections per paper. So already you've got the work that's extended out from the ideal of about a year where you'd like to really know that's when you'd like to know what's really going on to five to maybe ten years before results are even published, and then start the repeats. And suppose you do get some outfit to repeat your work exactly the same way? Well, unless there's someone like our group out there looking for all these systematic errors and looking for something that could be wrong, you're going to have another five years to ten years before you have the answer. Now we're up to fifteen to twenty years. Meantime, these things are being marketed, and they're being talked up on websites and in books and on radio programs on anywhere else, and making their way into medical schools as part of alternative medicine instruction, and so forth, and some of these things get lives of their own, and it may be decades before they're disproved. That's the problem, and not only that, but it takes five or ten of these trials to be able to prove or disprove within some degree of certainty that something works or doesn't work, because each trial then is looking at a slightly different angle.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And just not a true replication. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Now, of course, all of this, (unintelligible) for one second, all of this of course applies to any modality that we care to study, even legitimate scientific plausible modalities. But I think that the key difference is within conventional scientific medicine, practitioners tend to be much more conservative. We don't tend to jump on the bandwagon of one study, but rather wait for a consensus of a few trials to come out, wait for the replication. We take a more skeptical eye towards any new therapeutic claims. It's certainly true that sometimes modalities may become incorporated into our practice, and then later studies contradict or show that it does work, but then we abandoned them. We get rid of the ones that don't work. In the alternative medicine world, there is never, ever a case where an alternative medicine proponent will come to the conclusion that any modality doesn't work. It simply does not exist for them.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. I've never found one either.<br /> <br /> S: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Weil Andrew Weil] has never, ever, ever, condemned any alternative modality as not working.<br /> <br /> E: And the media loves him. Loves him!<br /> <br /> S: Oh they love him. He's the guru of the century. In your article you point out that the National Center after ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars has not proven anything to be ineffective, which is absurd in the scientific medical world.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. There have been a few advances. We were making this point up until about a year ago. Within the past year or two there have been some exceptions to that, and one is Andrew Weil has condemned [[wikipedia:Chelation_therapy|chelation therapy]].<br /> <br /> S: Oh, that's good.<br /> <br /> WS: That's one. But that's about it. Of all the hundreds of alternatives ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... that's the only one I know that he won't say works. Or says doesn't work.<br /> <br /> === Echinacea &lt;small&gt;(29:44)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> WS: The second exception is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinacea echinacea], and after the last two trials the [[wikipedia:National_Center_for_Complementary_and_Integrative_Health|National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine]] head has finally made a statement that it shouldn't be used ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... and stopped research on it. However, he got a letter from the industry. I forget which industrial group this was ...<br /> <br /> S: &quot;He&quot; being [https://nccih.nih.gov/about/offices/od/bio.htm Stephen Straus], the head of the National Center.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Right. He got a letter very recently from the supplement industry telling him he was wrong about this and should ...<br /> <br /> S: Recant his ... <br /> <br /> WS: ... reject what he said, because he did exactly that, and he took back what he said, and put in a specific statement saying &quot;More studies are needed.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: More studies.<br /> <br /> WS: Because they didn't use the dose that was recommended. And for reasons like that. That's what the Council on Nutrition had claimed, and they sent a letter to the editor of the New England Journal, also, and our leader, Stephen Straus, of the National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine actually bowed to these people in the industry and withdrew his previous statement saying that echinacea didn't work, and came out with this mealy-mouth statement. Now I might add that my article in the New England Journal that was regarding that last clinical trial, made the point that there was no historical reason that anyone can find to indicate that it should be used in colds and flus.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: In other words, Native Americans had used it for at least thirteen to twenty-one different uses, including an inhalation of its smoke, use of echinacea as a compress, and all sorts of other &amp;ndash; and use as a local application for a painful tooth and a sore throat, but never was their use in a viral type illness or a feverish illness. And all the primary information that we consulted, and I consulted at least fifteen textbooks on this, and also the original text that related what the original Indians had told the traders.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The American and French and Spanish traders. Never was there a claim for that. The claim came from one Swiss and one German homeopath and quack who saw this material. It's a long story and will be published in our journal, but what they did was they got somewhat deluded by one fellows' trip to South Dakota and a talk with a medicine man's son, and came back and made it up.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: He actually invented it in Germany, and marketed it as a cold cure.<br /> <br /> S: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> WS: That's how it became popular in the United States. There was no basis for researching it at all!<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: And of course that was completely ignored by the letters to the editor and ignored by National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: So this gives you a little idea of what we are up against here.<br /> <br /> === Alternative Medicine Culture &lt;small&gt;(33:11)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Let me back up just a minute because, while I and my colleagues have been dealing with this issue for a long time, for many years, struggling really to find a way in my opinion to really get across to the public, to regulators, to educators, what it is we care about. I think that we get bogged down in terminology like &quot;scientific medicine,&quot; &quot;evidence-based medicine,&quot; et cetera. And the alternative medicine crowd I think have really learned over the years to expertly use terminology to their advantage. They really play that game very well. But honestly, when you break it down, I think what we're talking about is some very basic principles. The first being that medicine should be safe and effective. I think this is sort of a common ground that everyone can agree on. That it's inefficient, unethical, improper to use treatments which either don't work or which are unsafe. Although you'd be amazed at how difficult it is some times to get the alternative medicine people to agree to that. We further believe that over the last hundred, hundred and fifty years we've had some accumulative process of figuring out the best way to know what works and to know what is safe, and that these are really &amp;ndash; again, there's no magic to this. I think people use the term &quot;science&quot; as if it's a magic wand. Basically, all we're talking about is intellectual integrity, fairly accounting for the evidence, using methods which are appropriate and legitimate, using valid logic in assessing claims, using appropriate statistics. That's it! That's all that we're really advocating. There's not really a big ideological or philosophical issue at stake here. It's really just an issue of quality. And when you dig down deep into any of these alternative modalities, what you find is that intellectually, they're extremely lacking. Either they're outright fraud, or they do not account for the evidence, or they are employing grossly invalid logic, or all of the above. Would you agree with the basic assessment?<br /> <br /> WS: Very good! I sure do.<br /> <br /> S: We say not that we're against all alternative or against some kind of artificial category, we think that &quot;medicine is medicine&quot;. There is one medicine, and it should have the best quality possible. You brought up evidenced-based medicine. That is just I think is just the latest iteration of mainstream medicine's dedication to again this sort of excellence and quality in medicine, in health care. But you're right in that it has some holes in it, and I think the big one that we haven't talked about is the fact that it doesn't consider plausibility or prior probability.<br /> <br /> WS: Mmmmm.<br /> <br /> S: So it assess empirical evidence essentially in an intellectual vacuum, as if we don't have a hundred and fifty years of biology and medicine behind us, which I think is just utter folly. Wouldn't you agree with that?<br /> <br /> WS: Well I sure do. We've been bouncing this one back and forth for I think the past four years or five.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And trying to figure out a good way to approach this so that the medical journals would accept what we had to say and not reject it off-hand ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... as offensive as they so often do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The other thing that was sort of implied in what we've been talking about so far, but I think it's worth talking about for a few minutes, is what really is the size and scope of the alternative medicine phenomenon in our culture. Clearly it has risen to higher prominence in society, but my sense is that the public has been led to believe, essentially by a sensationalistic and credulous media, that there is a paradigm shift &amp;ndash; I always hear that term being used &amp;ndash; within scientific medicine, with science itself, and that it is being increasingly accepting of alternative modalities. But I just do not see that. I do not believe that that is the case. What I ...<br /> <br /> P: You hear that about scientific community, not the public?<br /> <br /> S: About both. About both.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: But yes, the claim is absolutely being made about the scientific community. In fact what we see when we survey health-care professionals et cetera &amp;ndash; and, again, I work inside an academic institution, so I can tell you from my direct experience is that ninety-five, ninety-six percent of scientists and health-care professionals think it's bunk. They just don't care about it. It's below their radar. They think it's a cultural pop fad that is not worthy of their time and attention. They may out of some misguided attempt at political correctness they may not condemn it in harsh terms, but they certainly don't think anything of it. There's only about four to five percent of practitioners who are really enamored of and dedicated &amp;ndash; really on ideological and philosophical grounds &amp;ndash; to these spiritual, new-age or anti-scientific or unscientific modalities, and they're the ones who are making all the noise. And they're trying to make it sound like there's a revolution going on inside medicine. It's really a false revolution, but the media is buying it, and they're selling this fiction to the public.<br /> <br /> P: Why? What is the allure of the media? What attracts them to it so powerfully?<br /> <br /> WS: &quot;Man bites dog&quot;. Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news. It's the unusual happening instead of the usual happening.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: That's what makes news.<br /> <br /> S: It's a little also counter-culture and anti-establishment.<br /> <br /> WS: I wish I had begun to tabulate the number of reporters I've talked to over the past ten or twenty years, who admitted to me that they thought that this whole thing was bunk, and yet wrote up their articles as if there's really something there.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> WS: And I wish I could have just tabulated the number, because it just from my memory it's about ninety, ninety-five percent of them.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: What?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's my experience, too, although I will have to say that reporters I think tell you what they think you want to hear as a method of opening you up.<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I don't know if that really reflects their views, or if they're just buttering us up, because they know they're interviewing &quot;the skeptic.&quot; So &quot;Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm skeptical, too.&quot; so, &quot;Let me hear it, tell me what you really think.&quot;<br /> <br /> WS: That's true.<br /> <br /> S: I agree that in general I think I can get a sense when people are BSing me, or if they're genuinely skeptical. If they could really talk the talk. And I've had that experience, too, where you deal with either a producer or a reporter or whatever who appears to be by all accounts fairly skeptical, but they produce a credulous piece. It's usually out of naivety, just unfamiliarity with the topic at hand or because they believe that they're dealing with a &quot;fluff piece&quot;, and therefore they don't have to.<br /> <br /> P: But I'm sure there are a large number of people who author articles that they don't believe in just because they think ...<br /> <br /> S: Sure.<br /> <br /> P: ... they look good in print that it'll please their editors ...<br /> <br /> E: That's their job.<br /> <br /> P: ... et cetera, et cetera. Right. It's their job. I believe that, a lot of them.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. My curiosity is: will the public acceptance of the presence of alternative medicine rise to the point where it will no longer be sensational, or will in fact we run through the cycle where the press will be interested in doing stories about the evils of alternative medicine? I don't know if that cycle is going to occur, but I'm watching and waiting to see if it does.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, it will take a slew of deaths related to alternative medicine that might turn people against it.<br /> <br /> S: Only celebrity deaths will help.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Like the baseball player that died.<br /> <br /> S: You have to kill off famous people, otherwise the public won't care.<br /> <br /> P: (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> E: That baseball player that died, what was it, one year ago or two years ago. Ephedrin?<br /> <br /> S: Of ephedra.<br /> <br /> E: Ephedra.<br /> <br /> S: Definitely it was helpful. Although &amp;ndash; and the FDA &amp;ndash; this was the one and only &quot;supplement&quot; that the FDA was able to ban under the ridiculous dietary supplement and health education act of 1994. And in fact there are already calls to have that reversed because the industry is claiming that the FDA, even though it took them six years to compile the evidence that ephedra was unhealthy, was too risky to be marketed, the industry is now claiming that they didn't make their case. Again, they're using the dose issue, that the ...<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... marketing at a lower dose could potentially be safe.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't Peter &amp;ndash; sorry, Steve, I didn't mean to interrupt you.<br /> <br /> S: Go ahead.<br /> <br /> P: Didn't Peter Sellers and Andy Kauffman have psychic surgery?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: That didn't help them very much.<br /> <br /> WS: They also went for laetrile.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, really.<br /> <br /> WS: Andy Kauffman did. Steve McQueen.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Yeah. Down to the border clinics across the border in Mexico. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And Peter Sellers had chelation therapy, in addition to the psychic surgery.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, he did.<br /> <br /> WS: That's right. That's right. Now I remember.<br /> <br /> === Chelation Therapy &lt;small&gt;(42:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Chelation therapy, again, it's a legitimate treatment for heavy-metal poisoning, but there is a small subset of dedicated practitioners who are using it to treat &amp;ndash; prevent heart attacks and strokes. Decades of evidence has shown that it doesn't work, and any putative mechanism by which it might work has been proven to be wrong. Again, really within ethical, scientific medicine, it's use for vascular diseases has been discarded. There are just some people who will not be persuaded by the evidence.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. And there's a side issue here which is most important, and very difficult to gather data on this, but the doctors who use chelation are obviously &amp;ndash; I think you have to invent a new term for it, and I call it intellectually with specific intellectual deficit. Intellectually deficient in specific areas. In other words they can function very well maintaining their bank accounts and even repair their cars and may even write glorious novels, but when it comes to this one specific area of chelation for cardiovascular disease, they completely lose their heads. <br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: These people are dangerous, and chelation has been a major reason for physicians having their licenses revoked or suspended ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... over the past thirty, forty years. These are bad doctors.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> WS: The best way the boards could catch them was to catch them giving chelation. Now, unfortunately, there've been some movements in the legal field which have defanged the boards, taken away their ability to prosecute these physicians on the basis of this one action.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: And these chelationists, it's practically all they do, so you can't catch them doing other things. You have to catch them ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... from some patient who's died or had a bad complication. The problem is they give so little of the stuff that it can't possibly work, and it doesn't produce any side effects or toxicity in the highly dilute form that's given. So they get off doing it, and the quirks in the law and the quirks in the board policies that have been recently changed are responsible for its continuation, actually.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now <br /> <br /> WS: The Doctors, the whole system has been changed around chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> S: That's right. What you are basically talking about is a class of laws called the &quot;health care freedom&quot; laws, basically, and these kinds of things are regulated on a state by state basis. Each state has their own department of health or their health board that regulates licensing health care professionals and physicians and also disciplining them. And, traditionally, a state health board can discipline or even remove the license of a physician if they were practicing sub-standard medical care. The burden of proof was on the state, but if the state could prove through appropriate use of expert witnesses and evidence, et cetera, that a physician was practicing bad medicine, what we call sub-standard care, they could be disciplined. They could have their license taken away. This is a measure of protecting the public from fraudulent or just bad doctors, who are practicing bad medicine. Well, in the legal and cultural milieu that we find ourselves now, under the banner of &quot;health care freedom&quot;, a number of states have passed health care freedom laws, which specifically state &amp;ndash; there's different formulations, but the bottom line is that any practitioner who is practicing &quot;alternative medicine&quot;, which is kind of an artificial category, but something similar to &quot;complementary, alternative medicine&quot; can not be disciplined for practicing sub-standard care. In other words, they are not held to any standard of care.<br /> <br /> E: Freedom to commit fraud, basically.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, absolutely. The state of Florida has this law &amp;ndash; I was involved recently a couple of years ago in a case where there was a neurologist who was practising fraudulent, horribly bad medicine, and it's clear, to me, that he just made up his treatment, just designed to make money out of patients. We proved to a legal certainty, the judge decided that he was indeed practising sub-standard care, but then he appealed on the basis that what he was doing was alternative, and under the Florida statute got off scott-free, and is now free to commit quackery and fraud against patients because of this law. And this whole movement is very closely tied to the whole chelation therapy movement, the freedom for these doctors to prescribe their chelation therapy.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. It is an aspect of this changing paradigm. That concept actually developed in the late ninteen-seventies that predicted the paradigm would change, so that all of these things would then become appropriate therapies has changed, but it's only changed within certain segments, including the legal part of societies. It certainly hasn't changed science, at all.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because, as you said before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: But it has changed the practicalities of it, the practices, and some of the public perception.<br /> <br /> S: Right. So what there is, is an increasing disparity, and increasing disconnect between science, what scientists and scientific practitioners believe and do, and what the law states the regulation of medicine and also what the public thinks is really going on.<br /> <br /> WS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: A broading gap between science and the public is always, always a bad thing. In this arena, we're talking about direct health effects, not some abstract, down-the-road danger of believing in silliness, but some decisions that are made directly and have an immediate impact on people's health. Sometimes even to the point of premature death. We see that all the time, certainly.<br /> <br /> WS: Yup. Another aspect to this has been what I don't think the public has any recognition of this or realization of it, and very few people in the field of medicine recognize what's going on either is that when the claim is made that increasing numbers of people are going for alternative medicine, and it's being more and more accepted, the reaction of physicians is to say &quot;What are we doing wrong?&quot; ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... number one, and number two is to come to an accomodation with it. Instead of opposing it, they say: well, we've done something wrong, it's our fault, and so what can we do? We must get along with the patients who believe in this ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and want to do it, and we must help them, and the interests of their lives and their happiness ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... regardless of how we feel about it, and regardless of our consciences and what our rationality tells us. And you get the same reaction in medical literature among medical editors and journals. An article, for instance, that opposes, that presents information opposing the use of these unscientific methods will usually be rejected. There are very few articles in the literature that have been accepted that propose that physicians reject them as a group or as individuals or that try to work with a patient to discourage them from using these things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: That fascinates me.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Fascinates me greatly, as as matter of fact.<br /> <br /> S: It's become politically incorrect.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Which is the enemy of reason, rationality, and science, and basically you're saying that you have some ideology or political concern which trumps evidence, reason, logic, and science. And, again, it has immediate and very severe detrimental effect on the public health.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: To my lay mind the thing that would seem to have the most profound negative impact on these alternative modalities is simply their lack of efficacy, right? If it doesn't work, who's going to use it? Or more to the point, who's going to pay for it? And yet it doesn't seem to have any impact at all, and I guess that's because ...<br /> <br /> B: Human psychology.<br /> <br /> P: ... of placebo, self-limiting disease, and the fact that they're often taking these alternative modalities along with evidence-based medicine, I think.<br /> <br /> WS: Well, that's interesting, because the perception of the patient shifts, but it starts out with this usually deluded or self-deluded recognition that I'm doing this for my cancer, say of the prostate, and I seem to be doing very well (I just got radiation of course, and my PSA level is going down), but I'm on all these supplements, and I intend to stay on the supplements because I want to cover all bases. And eventually I get to believe my PSA keeps going down, it must be the supplements. That's what I'm doing. This is very powerful. And then when the PSA starts to rise again, well the reason must be that I'm taking the wrong supplements, so I'll change. Or I'm not taking enough of it, or I skip too many doses. And that kind of rationalization comes in. The socking in of belief, the power of that belief, is such that people don't make the right decision. They don't make rational decisions ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... based on what they truly have observed. They make the decision based on what they think they would want to have happened.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: And what they want to have happened.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: And the psychologists have studied this phenomenon for many years, and that's why Steve and I are enthralled with psychology brethern ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: ... who have laid these things out. And there's book after book that there must be five or ten at least well-written textbooks on this matter that are taught in advanced and upper-division psychology classes, and that we use all the time in our teaching. The psychologists have figure all this stuff out. But even though you can deal with it intellectually, individual patients, when they are faced with these personal problems, fail to recognize that what they even may have learned through a textbook and through a course and lecture, they fail to be able to apply it to themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The bottom line is, and again this is well, well described and very thoroughly understood, is that there is always an almost complete disconnect between what patients, what the public perceives and what's really going on in terms of their illness or their response to treatment. There's a host of psychological mechanisms at work that overwhelm any perception of reality. Scientists know this. We all know this. That's why you need to do carefully designed studies. Studies, when a study is &quot;carefully designed&quot;, what that means is it is designed to eliminate the effect of all of these biases that we know are there. Anecdotal evidence, the reason why anecdotal evidence is pejorative, is because it's not controlling for all of this variety, this host of psychological and biasing factors. Anecdotal evidence is worse than worthless, because it tends to lead one to conclusions they wish to be true. It has almost no relationship to the actual truth. And that's really a critical point of understanding between our position, the scientific and rational position, and alternative medicine proponents, is they just don't get that. They don't want to get that. They're happy to rely on anecdotal evidence because you can prove anything with it, because, again, it leads you happily to whatever conclusions you wish to be true.<br /> <br /> WS: That's so right.<br /> <br /> S: It's critical for us to make that point to the public, that the fact that somethings seem to work is meaningless. It's absolutely meaningless. I can't tell you how many times people come to me &amp;ndash; and we hear this, too, in all areas of skepticism, &quot;Well how do you explain this? A friend of mine had this disease and he took this bizarre treatment, and he got better. How do you explain that?&quot; Well, that's anecdotal; it can't be explained. But it's worthless as evidence. It just runs totally contrary to basic human psychology, I guess. <br /> <br /> B: And Steve, don't forget, and I'm sure you didn't forget, but also it's worth pointing out that science-based medicine also helps prevent biases on the part not only of the patient but of the experimenter, the scientists themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Absolutely. Every one involved needs to be &amp;ndash; there needs to be precautions taken against bias. The observer, the person conducting the trial, the subject, and the analysis of the data at the back end. Any time there is a potential for bias to get into the final analysis of the data, it will be there, so you have to design it in such a way either that it can't influence the results or are averaged out over large numbers of subjects.<br /> <br /> WS: We want to both praise the doing of appropriate randomized clinical trials, while at the same time try to point out the defects.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: The things they can't really cover, at least not yet been designed to cover.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: But we think that's correctable.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: I'm convinced that bringing in, as you've said, prior probability, which we haven't talked about much, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: ... but that can actually be factored in quantitatively as a choice of numbers ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and plausibility, and factor in considerations for the possibility of fabrication and fraud. We have a list of things to look for that simply haven't been incorporated yet.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> WS: We're all for evidenced-based medicine or for sure tightening it up and recognizing its limitations, as well.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. In fact, again, scientist practitioners consider prior plausibility on a day-to-day basis. <br /> <br /> WS: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We know biology. We know how things work, basically. We know the limitations on our knowledge of how things work, and whenever a new treatment comes down the pike, the instinct of the scientists or the clinician is to think &quot;How could that work?&quot; Does that make any sense given everything else that we think we know about biology and medicine. That's the <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience consilience] of medicine. And I think that would solve the problem to a large degree if any claim to knowledge has to be accounted for within the framework of everything that's already been established to whatever degree it has been established. You can't take some new idea in an absolute vacuum as if we don't know anything.<br /> <br /> WS: Sure. As a matter of fact it comes into play the moment you start to make up a clinical trial or apply for a grant.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> WS: Because you can't make up a study of intestinal flu in ants ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> WS: ... and try apply it to humans.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: What on earth are you talking about?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> WS: Because there is no plausibility there. So it's actually done repeatedly. The problem in alternative medicine is that almost all claims in humans are now plausibile. That's the problem.<br /> <br /> S: Right. They want to change the rules. They want to change the rules.<br /> <br /> WS: They are changing them, that's right. They are changing the rules.<br /> <br /> S: Plausibility is equated to closed mindedness.<br /> <br /> WS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They dismiss all of it. You make any kind of assessment of prior probability or plausibility, they interpret that as being close-minded and dismissive.<br /> <br /> WS: Exactly. It's up to us to make the case to bring it in in a convincing way.<br /> <br /> S: Well, it's an uphill battle.<br /> <br /> WS: It sure is.<br /> <br /> S: We'll keep plugging away. Well I hate to say this but our time once again is up. It always goes by so quickly. Dr. Sampson, again, we appreciate having you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thanks for joining us.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> WS: It was my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.<br /> <br /> S: Great! I hope to have you back again in the future. We just barely scratched the surface. There's so much more.<br /> <br /> E: There's so much. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Perry, Evan, Bob &amp;ndash; thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}}<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_23&diff=9611 2015-01-31T18:28:30Z

<p>WearSunScreen: Removed need for proofreading, links</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 23<br /> |episodeDate = 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = JM: {{w|Jan Helen McGee}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-21-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, December twenty-first, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me tonight are Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Perry DeAngelis ...<br /> <br /> P: Good evening.<br /> <br /> S: and Bob Novella.<br /> <br /> B: Hello.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> <br /> === Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District Decision &lt;small&gt;(0:23)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: The news today, the big news this week is victory in Dover.<br /> <br /> P: Yaaaayyyy!<br /> <br /> B: Whoo-hooo!<br /> <br /> S: Judge John Jones handed down a hundred and thirty-nine page <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District decision]],<br /> and this is the case &amp;ndash; the name of the case is ''Tammy Kitzmiller, et. al. vs. the Dover Area School District''.<br /> This was regarding the teaching of [[wikipedia:Intelligent_design|intelligent design]] we've been talking about over the last few months. This is the eagerly-awaited decision. I don't think there was really much doubt, at least not in my mind, that the judge was going to decide against the school district, basically ruling that teaching of intelligent design in the public schools is unconstitutional. The real question was how broad or narrow his decision was going to be. I've perused at lot of the 139-page decision, and I've got to tell you this judge did not leave a stone unturned. This was, I think, the broadest decision we could have hoped for. <br /> <br /> B: I wonder what kind of help he had. Going through a court case like that, I'm sure you end up well-versed in the topic, but I wonder what outside sources he approached in coming up with this. I mean, he didn't write this 139-page himself, did he? I'm sure he's got guys that ...<br /> <br /> P: Everyone's got clerks.<br /> <br /> B: ... sum up everything.<br /> <br /> S: He as staff. He had six weeks of testimony. <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: He had a lot of precedence, a lot of cases that he was summarizing. He actually took the time to go through the history of creationism in this country and the history of the legal cases. A lot of it was material he would have had available to him. And then the rest is commenting specifically on testimony that was given before him. <br /> <br /> P: Right. Which is what he should do. He should base his decision on the case presented to him.<br /> <br /> S: A few things that struck me, reading through it &amp;ndash; actually many things, but some things that I think are very significant. The judge, who again I think was trying to really establish an iron-clad decision here that cannot be circumvented. He commented specifically on the fact that ID (Intelligent Design) has historical connections to Creationism. And multiple times in the decision he wrote that a reasonable person assessing this, understanding the cultural and historical context – very, very specifically was putting intelligent design into its historical context – saying, again, tying it to its religious antecedents. There was some specific pieces of information he cited, for example, the ''Of Pandas and People''<br /> &lt;ref&gt;''Of Pandas and People'' &lt;/ref&gt;<br /> book that was specifically referred to in the Dover law, basically saying that you have to teach intelligent design in the public schools. There were multiple drafts of this book available, and one draft &amp;ndash; earlier drafts used the word ''creationism,'' I think a hundred and fifty times. And the final draft was essentially was a search-and-replace &amp;ndash; replaced the word ''creationism'' with the words ''intelligent design.''<br /> <br /> B: And not only that, the timing was significant. When it was changed.<br /> <br /> S: And that occurred right after the legal case that basically said that creationism could not be taught in public schools. So, they said &quot;OK, lets change the work 'creationism' for 'intelligent design' and try again.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, I'm not sure if you're aware the circumstances under which the book got into the school was very, very shady. It was kind of like laundered in a sense, in the description that I read, where somebody involved, he had somebody buy the book and give it to the schools or something. It was a little underhanded from what ...<br /> <br /> S: It was very contrived.<br /> <br /> B: ... I gathered Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So if you may recall, guys, when [SGU_Episode_15 Chris Mooney] was on the show, we were talking about this topic, because he had been covering from a journalistic point of view, covering the trial. He noted that one concern is that – where the creationists are going to go next? assuming they lose this fight, which they did. What's their next move?<br /> <br /> B: I didn't think of that, yet.<br /> <br /> S: His concern was that &quot;what if they just try to mandate a criticism of evolution?&quot; Teaching the gaps and the flaws in evolutionary theory.<br /> <br /> B: Go right ahead.<br /> <br /> S: But not promoting the teaching of intelligent design, or anything that could be overtly religious. The judge in this case, Judge Jones, actually already kind of addressed that issue, and he said that specifically mandating teaching about the gaps or flaws in evolution only serves a religious purpose. And, again, he made that historical connection to Creationism. It is a strategy employed by creationists, and that was enough to link it to Creationism. I was very heartened by that. He's basically saying that the creationists can't just keep morphing their strategy from A to B to C to D and think that they're starting with a clean slate each time. Basically, they're not fooling anyone. Whatever it morphs into next is still Creationism, because the law, the judge in this case, said it is perfectly legitimate legalistically to put whatever it morphs into into its historical context. So that's good. I mean it basically ...<br /> <br /> E: Very astute.<br /> <br /> S: However you try to play the game, we have your number, and it's not going to work.<br /> <br /> B: Excellent! I've got a little clip here from his argument, from his paper. The part of it that I really focused on and I was really interested in is the fact that it's just so not science, it's pathetic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: How hard can it really be to say &quot;Look, this is not science. Therefore, regardless of anything else, it doesn't belong in the classroom.&quot; And he's got three points here: ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: That's a bigee. That's kind of important right there. The second one is the argument of irreducible complexity, central to intelligent design, employs the same flawed and illogical, contrived, dualism that doomed Creation science in the eighties.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: This next one ties into what you recently said, Steve. &quot;Intelligent design's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.&quot; That's it. All this negative stuff you're saying about evolution: it's not one scientific theory against another. The scientific community unilaterally has said &quot;Wrong! This stuff is just not true.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: That's right, and I think in the part of his decision he specifically mentions the testimony regarding <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe Behe's]]<br /> favorite example: the flagellum. He says it's irreducibly complex. And yet, scientists gave testimony that in the five years or six years since Behe first proposed that example, that more of the evolution of the flagellum, and I think also of the immune system, has been flushed out. His claim that's it's irreducibly complex has been proven false since he made those claims. New research has been done to show that.<br /> <br /> B: And he knows that, come on!<br /> <br /> S: He does.<br /> <br /> B: You know he knows that.<br /> <br /> S: Which pegs him as being disingenuous, and again the judge was very scathing about the ID proponents basically saying that they were not sincere in their position.<br /> <br /> P: To say the least, that's what he said, yes.<br /> <br /> B: Right. I've got some other interesting pullouts here that I've gleaned.<br /> <br /> S: Well, before you move on, I want to just comment on some of things you just brought up, some of the points. For example, the supernatural aspect of intelligent design, and the judge spent a lot of time writing about that, and that's critical also, because as we said before, the intelligent design proponents are not simply presenting intelligent design as science. They are trying to redefine science to include supernatural explanations, and the judge spent a lot of time addressing that specific point. First of all, he pointed out that every single ID defendant in the case admitted that there is no intelligent design without a supernaturalism. Therefore, it does not meet the conventional definition of science. They admitted it! Then he explained very carefully why supernaturalism equals religion. And why it is not admissible in the halls of science. The two are incompatible. So he very specifically made that decision. Again, this is absolutely critical to this whole debate. Again, as we discussed before, you can't change the rules of science. They are the way they are by necessity.<br /> <br /> B: That was the most egregious thing.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: The fact that they were even attempting to redefine science. Steve, there's another thing. The judge asked a lot of the Board members, he asked them about intelligent design, and almost all of them didn't even really know any details, they couldn't even describe it to the judge, and he was so taken aback by that. The best that one member said to him was that its &quot;things are designed intelligently.&quot; These are people ...<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: It's intelligent design<br /> <br /> B: Talk about sheep! I mean, do this and say this. OK. My, God!. They didn't even bother, even months later, bother to study up on intelligent design so they can talk intelligently about it in court!<br /> <br /> S: They didn't even do their homework before court.<br /> <br /> E: They apparently totally underestimated the judge.<br /> <br /> B: Or over estimated their counsel.<br /> <br /> S: So I imagine there has been an interesting response from the ID proponents after such a scathing and devastating decision against them.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I've been looking for some response. There's been some, and I assume in the future it will start coming out as to what they want to do. A couple of things I got here is: one of the guys at the [[wikipedia:Discovery_Institute|Discovery Institute]], [[wikipedia:John_G._West|John West]], a senior fellow, says that &quot;Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution. He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur.&quot; Now obviously, he didn't read the judge's paper. He made a point of saying &quot;I am not an activist judge, and this is not an activist bench.&quot; Look at the past decisions he's made, and that's just not what he is.<br /> <br /> S: He's a conservative judge who's actually a G. W. Bush appointee, by the way, who's religious. The judge is.<br /> <br /> B: Really? I did not know that.<br /> <br /> S: He says he's not an activist judge. The school board that tried to impose the religious views on a public school system, they were being activist, and they overstepped their bounds, and they did not serve the public well. He's absolutely right. Of course the Discovery Institute and the ID proponents are going to be crying like babies about this decision, but they have nothing to say. He's trying to redefine science. Hello! They're the ones who are trying to redefine science. He had centuries of precedence to establish the separation of supernaturalism from natural causes in science. Centuries of precedence, basically since the dawn of science. That is the division between science and religion.<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So it just tells you how vacuous and just intellectually dishonest their position is.<br /> <br /> B: It is. And here's another one. Richard Thompson, the lawyer for the Dover Area School, said that &quot;this judge should not place himself in a position of determining which scientific theory is valid and which is not.&quot; That's the first part of his quote, which is so ridiculous because that statement assumes that you've got two scientific theories, when, sorry, one of them is not a scientific theory.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The premise is wrong ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. The premise is wrong.<br /> <br /> S: ... and the conclusion is wrong. The other premise there is that judges don't decide the validity of science in the courtroom? Of course they do. They do that every day. They hear expert testimony, and they decide which scientific testimony is legitimate. The judge painstakingly went through all of the testimony on both sides, and showed on every single point the plaintiffs expert witnesses, the defenders of evolution and science, absolutely crushed the ID proponents, who just committed logical fallacy after logical fallacy.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> S: The fact is, when you're in a court of law, when there are rules of evidence and logic, and you are dealing with people who are experts in logic &amp;ndash; lawyers are, if nothing else, experts in logic. That is their skill. That is what they do. You can't get away with anything, and the judge saw through every single one of their misdirections, every single one of their illogical statements. And that's it. They were called on it. And this is what happened ...<br /> <br /> B: Time and again ...<br /> <br /> S: ... in every single creationism case that has gotten to the high courts, is that under the rules of evidence of a courtroom, the creationist argument falls like the tissue paper that it's made of.<br /> <br /> B: Here's another one from Richard Thompson, the lawyer. He said &quot;It should be left up to the debate that the scientific community was involved with.&quot; He's leaving it to the scientific community? Hello! I think they already made their decision. There is no debate within the scientific community.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The scientific community is united in their position that ID is not science. They're also trying desperately to portray this as a debate between two different scientific ideas. Again, the premise is wrong. ID is not science. Again, and the judge very clearly explained exactly why that is. It fails the test for science in multiple ways. One, it allows supernatural explanations. Two, it's not testable, and he asked that question of Behe and the others who were ID experts in the case: &quot;Tell me a way in which intelligent design can be subjected to a scientific test.&quot; Everything that they proposed, he said was actually just a really a test of evolution, not a test of ID. And again they were falling back on this false dualism, saying that if it's not evolution then ID, which is the false dichotomy logical fallacy, and therefore they were misinterpreting or misrepresenting scientific tests of evolution as if they were tests of intelligent design. In fact, there are no possible tests of intelligent design, because it's not a scientific theory. Interestingly, as we're wrapping up this topic, two days ago, so the day before the Dover decision, there was an article, an editorial published by one-time Presidential candidate and political commentator [[wikipedia:Pat_Buchanan|Pat Buchanan]]. Now, Buchanan has a reputation for being a bit of a political maverick, but here the name of his article was &quot;Darwinism On Defense,&quot; and it's basically an attack of evolution. <br /> <br /> P: Good timing with this article.<br /> <br /> S: It was good timing, right, but interestingly Buchanan who is otherwise, even if you disagree with his politics, he is on the fringe on a lot of issues. Even if you disagree with him, he usually is pretty careful about how he formulates his arguments and tries to avoid overt factual misstatements. But now he's stepping into the arena of evolution-creation debate, and he dredges up arguments that have been destroyed thirty, forty years ago. He clearly knows nothing about this topic. Let me give you a couple of examples that I thought were so egregious, really do him a great disservice. He basically reiterates the old argument that survival of the fittest is a [[wikipedia:Tautology_(rhetoric)|tautology]], because those who survive are defined as those who are the fittest, and those are the fittest are defined as those who survive, which is absurd. Those who are fittest are the ones who can run the fastest, reproduce the best, who have those list of traits which enable them to survive and reproduce. That's what makes them the fittest, and that's what's enables them to survive. So it's not a tautology. That's really a silly argument that has been destroyed decades ago, and he's drudging it up as if it is some kind of a new concept.<br /> <br /> B: And here's another one. He asks here or he states here &quot;And there are gaps in human evolution. Where are the missing links between lower and higher forms?&quot; Come on! Where's he getting his playbook? From thirty year-old creationist texts?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred years.<br /> <br /> S: He must be. There are no transitional forms? Please! How about there are transitional forms between whales and terrestrial mammals: [[wikipedia:Ambulocetus|ambulocetus]]. Where was he when that was discovered? How about: there are now dozens of feathered dinosaurs that are clearly occupying a morphological zone between dinosaurs and modern birds. He says &quot;there's no missing link between apes and man.&quot; Come on, how about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus australopithecus]? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis homo habilis]? [[wikipedia:Homo_erectus|homo erectus]]?There's basically a nice sequence of transitional forms. Again, it's not strictly linear. Evolution tends to branch out; it's bushy as Steven J. Gould used to say.<br /> <br /> B: Definitely not a (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> S: Still, it represents an evolutionary of nice, intricate vast evolutionary connection between modern man, homo sapiens, and our ape relatives. It's there! I mean, go to a museum! <br /> <br /> P: Steve, it's interesting that you point out at the beginning of this segment that Pat Buchanan normally, regardless of what you think of his politics, is normally a careful thinker and constructs his arguments with thought. But when you get into these subjects, he obviously invested. He's emotional about it.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: And his &amp;ndash; really his critical truths fall by the wayside. It's obvious by what he wrote.<br /> <br /> S: Right. He basically did a hack job in that article, which is different than his usual writing.<br /> <br /> P: Right. Because he let his emotions get away with him. He needs this to be true.<br /> <br /> S: Well lets all savor this moment. This was a stunning, definitive victory ...<br /> <br /> E: It's a Christmas miracle.<br /> <br /> S: ... for evolution and for science and for our society. Really put the intelligent design on the ropes.<br /> <br /> B: True, but I want to see this in the Supreme Court.<br /> <br /> S: That would be nice, but this is still a federal district court.<br /> <br /> B: It is. Great, but man, I want the highest court.<br /> <br /> S: This is still precedence. It may not be definitive law nationally like a Supreme Court decision would, but it is still a very powerful precedence.<br /> <br /> P: It is a very powerful precedent, and he went above and beyond.<br /> <br /> S: He did.<br /> <br /> P: He was merciless on the ID side.<br /> <br /> B: It was a great way to end 2005, I think.<br /> <br /> S: Kudos to Judge John Jones.<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Judge.<br /> <br /> P: Hear, hear.<br /> <br /> == Interview with Jan Helen McGee, Psychic Detective ==<br /> <br /> === Interview &lt;small&gt;(20:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: And so joining us now is [http://www.janhelenmcgee.com Jan Helen McGee]&lt;ref&gt;[[http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=172.0 Follow up forum comments on Jan Helen McGee]]&lt;/ref&gt;. Jan Helen, as she tells us she likes to be called, was involved recently in a murder investigation. She is a physic detective who investigated the case of the murder of Mark Arnold. The murder occurred in 1993. She assisted Detective Paul Zechman in the case, and according to newspaper reports, etc., provided the probable location of the murderer, who was then found. The murderer was Robert Wise. So, Helen, Jan Helen, I'm sorry, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> JM: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you for joining us and agreeing to be confronted by four skeptics.<br /> <br /> JM: Ha, ha. You're pretty good with the Helen part, too, because Helen, my middle name, is the name that I've always used when I work on these cases. It's only recently that I've decided to talk about my involvement. It's always been a secret. The only police officer or detective that knew my real name was my direct link. The rest of the detectives that were working on the case only knew me as &quot;Helen&quot;.<br /> <br /> S: I see. Why don't you tell us about this case? Just start from the beginning and tell us how you got involved.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I had worked very peripherally on a case prior to this with some detectives in my town, [[wikipedia:Lebanon,_Pennsylvania|Lebanon, Pennsylvania]], another murderer in [[wikipedia:Palmyra,_Pennsylvania|Palmyra]]? This was the first big case I worked on. What happened was I had a dream. Frankly, my whole life I've had murder dreams. I didn't connect them with actual murders until it became quite clear in 1993. That night, before I started working on the case, I had a really scary dream, and I woke up my then husband and told him about the dream. Frankly, he woke up because I gasped from the fear that I had about the dream because I saw the actual murder. I told him the whole story of the dream and the murder, went back to sleep, and then in the morning I had this strong desire to go get a newspaper, which is something I never did &amp;ndash; drive to go get a paper. So I did, and when I picked up the paper, there on the front page was a picture of the building, and it was just a one-room shack-type building, and it was exactly like in my dream. I brought it home, and everything in the article was exactly as I had described it in the dream, and my husband at the time just kept pushing me. He said &quot;You just have to call the police&quot;. You can't, you don't have another choice.&quot; So I made a call to the local county detectives, and told him the things from the dream and then some other information. Then I went on my computer and typed up some added information, some thoughts that I had, and sent those to him.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: After that, I went in to his office and talked to him. Then, we sort of both decided I would go to the site, to the murder site, and see if I had any more insights. So then one Saturday morning, I went in to &amp;ndash; met them at the municipal building, and the chief county detective, Paul Zechman, took me in to a room that was just filled with detectives, maybe between five and eight of them, because what they were doing that day was they had decided to close down the site. The site had been open for several weeks, since this was a few weeks after the murder that this happened. And they were doing their very last collection. Somebody was coming down from Harrisburg to do some blood collection, and they were forensic people. This was like the last of the forensic, the last time to go on the site before they released it back to the owner. I got in there into that room, and there were all these detectives, and they were very, very unhappy because they had to work early, it was like 7:30 on a Saturday morning. They also weren't very happy to see me.<br /> <br /> S: Do they get many murders in that town, or was this maybe a first for them?<br /> <br /> JM: No, there's murder's in this town. I think it's a town of thirty thousand, so there's a murder every year. It doesn't have a high crime rate, but it doesn't have a real low crime rate. The city itself, even though I live in the county, the city itself has some trouble. So they weren't totally new to it. But I would say it's a pretty safe town, relatively safe, small town outside of Harrisburg. I was in that room, and Paul Zechman said &quot;OK, Helen, tell everybody what you told me.&quot; And then he left me in that room. I just sat down and I proceeded to tell the other detectives what I felt I knew about the case. One of the things that I was obsessed with that really had no meaning on the case, necessarily, but seemed very, very important to me, and it was a pathway, I think, so I guess in retrospect it's a little bit important, because it led me down a path. But one thing I saw in this one-room building was that the victim had over twenty-five black, rotary phones.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Those phones from the forties. And I just couldn't believe it, and I just kept talking about these phones. Finally I realized that only one of the phones was hooked up, and that he talked constantly, sat at his desk, and he talked constantly on the phone. And then I sort of got to the point where I felt that he was talking to his best friend on the phone. And then that's how I reached the conclusion that his best friend had killed him.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. What was the significant of the black rotary phone in the actual case?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, there really wasn't any. After I told the detectives in the room the things I knew, then we all packed up went out to the site, and it was snowing. There was some snow on the ground, and everybody was sort of milling around, and I was just walking around. One of the other detectives insisted that I look inside this building, and I really didn't want to, because, as it just sounds so bizarre, but when I saw the murder, and this isn't just in my dream, because I remember very little of my dreams. But when I see these murders, I sometimes switch from the victim to the killer, and then sometimes I sort of float. When I saw this all happening, I was sort of &amp;ndash; this just sounds so bizarre &amp;ndash; I was sort of floating above the floor as I watched it, and it's very &amp;ndash; it makes me feel physically ill when I go through these scenes and work on these cases. So I really didn't want to revisit that part. I felt I had told enough of it, but this one detective just insisted I look in there. Before I looked in, another thing that I knew about was that these two men had shared a meal together before the one killed the other. So when he opened the door and I looked inside the one-room building, I was quite shocked myself, because I didn't know that I was really &amp;ndash; I didn't have a clue that I was good at this. I just was driven to share my information. And when I looked in there, there were over twenty-five &amp;ndash; I've never seen so many black rotary phones. They were everywhere. They were on the chair. This was sort of a messy place. They were on the chair. They were on the counter. They were on the bookshelf. They were on every available surface &amp;ndash; had a black rotary phone. And then to the left was the desk that I had envisioned and the phone that was actually working. And then it was really creepy for me, because I looked over to the stove &amp;ndash; there was a stove in there &amp;ndash; and on the stove was a big pan with congealed meat.<br /> <br /> S: You mentioned that you don't remember what you dreamed but you re-live the murder in a vision. So this a waking vision that you get?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. The best way I can describe it to people, because a lot of people always want to know how do I see things. To me it's like a memory. Say for example you're in a grocery store, and you see someone, and they ring a bell. You say &quot;I think I know that person, but I don't know how or who they are.&quot; Then you walk, maybe around to the next aisle, and all of a sudden, you start realizing that that person went to school with you. And then you go down another pathway of memory that says &quot;Oh, that's right. It was middle school.&quot; And the next path might be &quot;Oh, it was Mrs. Jackson's room.&quot; And then suddenly you realize that it was art class, you can see, even though it might be twenty, thirty years ago, the memory just comes at you like it was yesterday. You can smell the room. You can see who's sitting next to you. You can remember the nervous habits of Mrs. Jackson, and then just the whole room opens up.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: To me, it's just like a memory. I go back a pathway, sometimes. I mean, sometimes things come very clearly. This case, even though I was obsessed with the fact that after this man killed his friend, he went outside and smoked a cigarette, tried to figure out what he was going to do, and then decided to steal his friend's identity, because he wanted to be his friend. But then I remembered that I was standing &amp;ndash; they were ready to close the site, and I was just standing there with Paul Zechman, and suddenly he said &quot;Where did he go?&quot; And that's when I told him he went to the beach. To me, it's not only my visions, if you want to call them, but also other's people's interpretations of what I say. Because I really think that in any kind of murder case, there are teams, and I feel like I was an important part of this team, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... but just a part of the team nonetheless. Just one puzzle piece. A puzzle can't be put together without lots of pieces, and I was one puzzle piece. If he hadn't asked me where he went, I might not even have mentioned that.<br /> <br /> S: But until he asked that question, had you had any visions about where he went after the murder?<br /> <br /> JM: No, because I was so upset that he killed his best friend, and then it's just not very pleasant, but I become the murderer.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I see their reasoning, and I find them very &amp;ndash; I sort of get on their side, as awful as it sounds, and the killer wanted to be the victim. As messed up as that sounds ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... he wanted to be his best friend. He adored his family. He was divorced, but his ex-wife, the victim's ex-wife was very, very solicitous towards him, took care of him, checked in on him, he had a lovely son. The killer wanted his son. He wanted his family. He wanted his life. He ended up stealing his car. I found out later he stole his car, his stole his wallet, he stole his whole identity. I was obsessed with them being best friends. I could hardly get past the fact that you would have a lovely meal with your best friend, and then he would just kill you. Without Paul's question, I don't know if I ever would have gone there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But when he asked the question, did you have a vision at that moment, or the information was with you already?<br /> <br /> JM: It just came right out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I hadn't even thought about it. It just came right out of my mouth. I said &quot;He's at the beach.&quot; And then I just thought it was so bizarre, because there was snow all over the ground. Who would go to the beach in the snow? And then I could see that he had gone to the beach when he was a child, and this was a safe place for him. So I told Paul that I didn't think he was at the Jersey beach. Now here in this town, when people vacation, they always go to the New Jersey beach.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: So that would be the first thought. He's definitely not at the New Jersey beach, but I thought it was either [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehoboth_Beach,_Delaware Rehovoth Beach, Delaware] or Ocean City, Maryland. And then I was suddenly &amp;ndash; it was just like I realized he was definitely there.<br /> <br /> S: At one of those two places.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Now I said &quot;Are they close?&quot; And Paul said they were sort of close. Because when I do this work I become very right-brained, and I have to sort of float. It's like &amp;ndash; I'm a musician, I'm a music teacher, and when I play music, and really want to interpret it properly, I have to get into my right-brained activity, and I have to act sort of floaty. And that's the same thing that I have to do here. Any left-brain activity sort of leads me. There's lot's of things I don't quite get when I'm working on cases.<br /> <br /> S: I see, so you're not good with directions when you're in this state.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I don't even like driving. I don't like being in charge of anything. I just like to sort of just let myself go, like you do when you're falling asleep. Sort of.<br /> <br /> S: Now is this something you've always been able to do, say when you were a little girl?<br /> <br /> JM: Sure. The first memory I have is I lived in a row house up until I was two, so this was before I was two years old. I remember waking up in my crib and standing up and feeling the urge to cry for my mother, but then I remember being able to see through the walls and see through the floor and see where she was in the house, so that I didn't have to cry because I knew that she was in the house with me and I didn't have to be afraid and that she would come. Then the next memory that I have is I must have been about kindergarten age, because I remember the sequence was that I asked my mother if I could go in the front yard alone. She'd let me in the back yard alone, but not in the front yard alone, because it was a busy street out front. And then I remember she finally decided that I was old enough. So maybe I was even six, but probably five, because I remember I walked to school alone in first grade when I was six, so I was probably kindergarten age. And she let me go in the front yard. And I used to go behind this big, big, fat tree that I could completely hide behind, and I would move around the tree and stare at the neighbors, and I remember that I could see through the tree and see through their walls and watch what they were doing. And we had ladies that were widows, and three of them were widows, and they really led a pretty boring life, so I didn't really like watching them.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: But right next door to us was a family that was totally out of control, and so mostly I would go in the front. In retrospect, it seems so odd, but I would stand there with my back to the tree, but I would look back through the tree and so that I could sort of lean against the tree, and my face didn't have to be against the tree and so I could look back through the tree and through the house, and the mother would always be screaming and she would throw herself on the stairs and cry and then the husband would come down the steps and he'd yell and then he'd slam the door and go out to his car and peel away down the alley.<br /> <br /> S: Did you have any other paranormal experiences as a child or older? Have you ever seen a ghost, for example?<br /> <br /> JM: (laughs) I don't really ... I ... I see dead people. I don't really like the term &quot;ghost&quot;, because it has such a bad connotation. I don't see lots of dead people. I don't really like to see dead people or to talk to dead people or have them talk to me, but I do. But not very often. And I think I always have known when there were ghosts in houses. I could pass houses when I was in the car and see which ones &amp;ndash; I remember seeing &quot;Oh, that one has a ghost.&quot; and &quot;That one's haunted.&quot; That's what I guess I could deem a friendly ghost, ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... and that's an unsettled ghost. I always consider them unsettled when they're not very happy.<br /> <br /> S: So do they ever talk to you?<br /> <br /> JM: Dead people?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. But not in the way that live people talk to me. I get these messages, and they're just &amp;ndash; it's information. The only way I can think to explain it is I really believe that it's the historical speaking in tongues ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... when I give information, because my brain doesn't feel like it's giving the information. I feel like it's coming through my body, like my body is like a radio or a conduit for the information. So it's not like I actually hear someone's voice that has died. I just get the information and then it comes out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: But I really don't like dealing with dead people. It's just something I can do like an artist.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Is it frightening or just unpleasant?<br /> <br /> JM: The murder cases are unpleasant, but I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for anybody else working on the case. Any of the police detectives or the forensic people or the coroner. I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for them. It's a very unpleasant job to have to do. Am I afraid? No, I'm never afraid. And I think that it makes me feel sick, but I don't think it makes feel any more sick than anybody else than an [[wikipedia:Emergency_medical_technician|EMT]] or anybody that has to deal with things like that.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: It's upsetting, but no more for me. I'm really not afraid of anything. I used to be afraid of the dreams, but what's so wonderful is that since that 1993 dream, I don't have murder dreams any more.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. That was the last one.<br /> <br /> JM: That was the last one, and I'd had them all my life, and so I think it's real important that I keep working on murder cases, because now my visions come during the day when I'm strong enough to deal with them, and I can have my nice peaceful sleep.<br /> <br /> B: What do you dream about now? Do you remember your dreams now?<br /> <br /> JM: Fun things. Vacations. Old boyfriends. Just normal things. Once in awhile I'll wake up with my jaw clenched and not quite know what it is. But it's usually just nothing, just nebulous dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Nothing that really means anything. Just worry dreams. I have a few of those dreams, like you are late for something. I constantly have this dream that I'm getting ready to go on vacation and I can't find the clothes to pack, and I'm going to miss the plane. Just those dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. Typical anxiety dreams.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Anxiety dreams. Right. But I don't have those murder any more. I'm so thrilled.<br /> <br /> S: So, again, we are talking to Jan Helen McGee. Evan, go ahead, you had a question for her?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah. Jan Helen, you mentioned other or at least alluded that you've worked on some other murder cases. How many have you worked on?<br /> <br /> JM: Well it's really hard to say, because until just recently I would just work on them and really not pay too much attention. I would say probably as much &amp;ndash; I work on them until I run out of energy. So maybe three to six murder cases a year since '93.<br /> <br /> E: Three to six.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Since 1993.<br /> <br /> E: What sort of successes have you experienced with those cases?<br /> <br /> JM: Frankly, I'm not sure, because what happens is I work on the case, and I tell all the information, and then I just walk out of the room and don't ever contact the police again, and I don't even care or find out. The only reason I found out about this case was because Paul Zechman was on a show called ''[[wikipedia:The_FBI_Files|The FBI Files]]'' on the Palmyra murder from this murder I had worked on previously. And after he finished filming that for New Dominion Pictures, they asked him if he knew of any psychics, and he told them about me, but said that I'm very private, and that he would call me, and when he did, I said &quot;Paul, of course not.&quot; I've kept this a secret. I don't want to talk to anybody, especially not television. And then there was silence and &quot;Oh, you want me to do this, right?&quot; And he said &quot;I think you should,&quot; because he knew that what my goal, one of my goals is to teach law enforcement to use their psychic ability. How to &amp;ndash; there's physical manifestations that we all have, that all psychics have, and I think that they can be pin-pointed, that they can pin-point psychics within law enforcement. So he said this will get you what you want.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: That's the only reason I know about this case.<br /> <br /> E: Sure. I'm just curious if you're curious at all about what could be deemed your rate of success as far as your psychics visions go and to how they actually turn out. Would you venture a guess maybe in a percentage of how often they are accurate?<br /> <br /> JM: I'd say a hundred. That doesn't mean that I solve every single case.<br /> <br /> E: No.<br /> <br /> JM: One time I worked on a robbery. I seldom work on robberies, but I remember early on, it was probably 1994 I worked on a robbery, and I called a cold call to a cop.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And he just flat out told me this was ridiculous. And I told him I don't know how it can harm you to write down what I say so I can get this out of my brain. So he did, and a year later he called me back, apologetic, and telling me every single thing I said was true, and he's so sorry, and he doesn't know why he acted like such a jerk. Other police, there's been cases that I've worked on that I know aren't solved, but part of it I think is that they didn't follow my advice. Paul Zechman trusted me and he did what I told him to do, and so if I give my information and the police do not do what I suggest, then it's not going to get solved. So as far as I'm concerned, I think my information is a hundred per cent. It's one of the few times in life I'm right.<br /> <br /> S: Can you turn your attention to a case and come up with information, or can you choose the cases, in other words, or do they choose you?<br /> <br /> JM: A little bit of both. Most of the time, I'll pick up the newspaper or I'll see something on the television, and then I'll say &quot;Oh, now. No, no. That's not the way it went.&quot; Or I'll know something, and then I'll just call. Sometimes, I've been called by police all over the state, and even out of state, for help, and then I can just work on that case. Occasionally, I don't know anything at all, but mostly I have something to go on.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think of other psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: I think most psychics are scam psychics.<br /> <br /> S: Most of them are not genuine.<br /> <br /> B: How do they work? How does their scams work?<br /> <br /> JM: You know, I think it's just like any other scam. Are you men scientists?<br /> <br /> S: Some of us.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Some by trade. Other by interest.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. By trade or interest. Right. So you have scientific thinking. So you know scam scientists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: They're scams in every walk of life, and they all work the same. They're very smart in that area, and they use tricks, and they BS.<br /> <br /> B: It's intentional. Sometimes it can be intentional, other times it can be more of a self-delusion, thinking they might think that they're not &amp;ndash; they might not be intentionally scamming, but sometimes they do. You come across all different types.<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly, but I don't think it's any different from any other scam, whether it's a scam lawyer, or ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... somebody says they're an FBI man, and they're scamming some girl. No matter what it is, he uses the exact same trick.<br /> <br /> S: So how can we tell the difference between the scam psychic detectives and the genuine psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, I'm coming out with a book that's called ''Psychic Surge: Don't Get Scammed''. Frankly, the book is over a hundred pages of all the different ways you have to go about to not get scammed. I think that it's just the same as a doctor. You need to find references. In my case, no police detective has ever worked with me without calling my references.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I have a profiler, which &amp;ndash; a profiler &amp;ndash; there's only two profilers in the state of Pennsylvania that I know of. And one of them vouches for me. And then, Paul Zechman always vouches for me. But have a whole long list now, but before I alway used the two of them. One thing is to find references. I think that you have to your instinct and your intellect if you are using a psychic because if you're like I was at the Hershey Hotel and sat down next to a psychic and she told me &amp;ndash; everything she told me was wrong, and it was clearly wrong. So I knew right away that she wasn't accurate. If she said six things, none of which are accurate, then I can see right there. I think you just can't let yourself get hoodwinked.<br /> <br /> S: Well, we certainly agree with that.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. It's just like any other scam person. You take their information, you check out their credentials, and use everything you can ... <br /> <br /> S: What would a credential be? In this field, there aren't really any credentials, because there is no gold standard. That begs the question that of course we're interested in as scientists and skeptics is how do we know if this phenomenon is even genuine at all from a scientific point of view, not necessarily from a personal point of view, but in the abstract.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I think most psychics are scam psychics, and as far as proof, do you love someone? Do you love someone?<br /> <br /> S: Of course I do.<br /> <br /> JM: But can you prove it?<br /> <br /> S: Well, that is not a scientific claim. If you make a claim about the facts of nature, that requires science. Making a claim about a subjective feeling is just completely different, so you really can't compare the two.<br /> <br /> JM: Well, this is a subjective feeling. If that's what you want to be ...<br /> <br /> S: But you have tangible &amp;ndash; but you are claiming tangible results, though, right?<br /> <br /> JM: But there are tangible results to love.<br /> <br /> S: The two types of claims are not comparable in terms of that analogy that you're trying to draw. Either a phenomenon is real or it isn't real. And if it's real, then there needs to be manifestations that can be objectively determined. Are you making the argument that there's no way science can ever validate your abilities?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: And why is that? Why would it be impossible to validate your abilities if they're real?<br /> <br /> JM: I think you could validate my results, like you validate the results of love.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Love makes you feel wonderful, love makes you kinder, more caring, and so you can go to Paul Zechman, a man who is the chief county detective in this town, a man who stakes his reputation on his good work, a man that you will see on the television show is a conservative, careful, slow-moving man, and he will tell you that I found his &amp;ndash; I enabled him to find his murderer.<br /> <br /> S: And we of course we accept that fact that he probably believes that, and again you knew coming in that we were skeptics and that ...<br /> <br /> JM: Oh, I don't mind.<br /> <br /> S: What our interpretation of all of this is a little bit different. We don't necessarily question people's motives or beliefs, because we can't read people's minds, so we don't know what people really think or believe. Our interest is on the tangible, verifiable results. We do know and just from experience with many, many different paranormal phenomenon that the capacity for people to be fooled by themselves, by events, is enormous, and the purpose of science is to essentially control for the really vast human tendency to deceive ourselves. Let me ask you a question. If we wanted to subject to some very basic common-sense controls to see if we could validate the results of your investigations, would you be willing to do that?<br /> <br /> JM: If I felt that &amp;ndash; I would be willing to do anything that was moving forward for good.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: I absolutely refuse to try to pick numbers or to try to make guesses, because my gift is not here to tell anybody something they already know.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: My gift is to find out what people don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Well let me give you an example. Because this is ...<br /> <br /> JM: Okay, and then I will tell you the way I think you should test me.<br /> <br /> S: Sure. Absolutely. When you get involved with a new case, really the only thing that we would need to do would be to record all of the information that you produced about the case before the investigation reaches it conclusion. And then in some sort of objective way compare what you predicted to what was actually discovered. That's all. It's very straight-forward.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, you can do national cases as far as I'm concerned. Every time there's a national case, you can call me and I can tell you if I know something and where we go, or you can just pick a case. You can find a case where you live. You don't have to tell me hardly anything. You can find an unsolved murder case and we can see if we can go down that avenue.<br /> <br /> S: That's great! I think that would be very instructive, and if your goal is to promote the use psychic detectives and to teach people how to use them correctly, this is the way to do it, in my opinion, because you could silence us, you could silence all the skeptics with verifiable data. That's really all we are asking for. In fact, we screen applicants for the Randi's Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. And we could do this as a screening test.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Because I really don't like the way he does things, because I just don't see how that's to humankind's good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, donate the money to charity. Do whatever you want with it. The point is it's a very public undeniable test.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. I don't have a problem with the money. I just don't want to do a test that is just not for the public good, because when I do any kind of work in this way, it takes a huge amount of energy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: And when I work on a murder case I often physically get ill.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: So, if I'm going to do this and takes this energy to try &amp;ndash; because I really don't have any interest in proving it to anyone.<br /> <br /> S: I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: It's just is. But I would be glad to work on more murder cases.<br /> <br /> S: That's great, but all we would ask is that you do what you're doing anyway. Do the cases that you're going to do anyway.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But we'll just verify them in a way that doesn't leave any room for guesswork. That we know that we can measure it in a scientific way the accuracy of the predictions that you make. <br /> <br /> JM: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We will allow you to set the parameters anyway you want to, as long as it allows for some objective observation and conclusions at the end.<br /> <br /> P: Jan Helen, you said you were going to give us a suggestion about how to test you. Out of curiosity, how would you test yourself?<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly like you said. I would like to work on murder cases, and you go ahead and find out how much of my information is accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's great! So we're in basic agreement. That's good.<br /> <br /> S: That's great. So we definitely would like to do that, because that I think it wasn't our purpose to debate with you here tonight. We really wanted to hear your experience and your side of the story.<br /> <br /> JM: Another thing that I can do is that if you physically put ten people in front of me I can probably tell what's physically wrong with all ten of them.<br /> <br /> S: You make like medical diagnoses?<br /> <br /> E: That's very testable.<br /> <br /> JM: I'm not a medicine person, but I can see what's wrong with them. What part of their body is weak ...<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> JM: ... has a weakness.<br /> <br /> JM: So you could ask all ten people what was wrong with them in advance, and you could see that.<br /> <br /> S: Give me an example of the kind of statement that you would make. You said what part of the body.<br /> <br /> JM: It usually just comes out with &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Okay, something like that &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> JM: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> S: Do you mention specific diseases like &quot;You have diabetes&quot;? That sort of thing.<br /> <br /> JM: No.<br /> <br /> S: No.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I'm not that accurate, because I'm not a medical person.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's just more basic symptoms.<br /> <br /> JM: No I can usually just see that bone, muscle, or blood, and if it's &amp;ndash; I can also see if it's inherited or if it was an injury.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, that's a lot more easy to test than going through an entire murder case and investigation and following it to its conclusion and then doing a comparison. I not saying we can't do that.<br /> <br /> S: Well, that would be another &amp;ndash; an easier test.<br /> <br /> E: Two different tests.<br /> <br /> S: But I think we should do both. They're different kinds of tests.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Right. And you know frankly, I just think I get a lot more power on the murder stuff, but I just know that's one other thing that I'm good at.<br /> <br /> E: Jan Helen, do you have to be in the room to see what's wrong with them, or do you it from afar, or you have to be in close proximity?<br /> <br /> JM: With the health problems, I usually like to be in a room with the person.<br /> <br /> E: In a room.<br /> <br /> JM: With the murder cases, I ... Murder cases I often start on the phone. But then when it starts to get upsetting, I usually like to be with a police officer, so I'm just wondering how that's going to go, but if we get to that point, there's no reason why you couldn't &amp;ndash; if there was a case, there's no reason why I couldn't also talk to the police officer and possibly they would let you be there, or have me continue with them. If it gets to that point, we'd want to continue and at least pass off my information to a detective.<br /> <br /> P: Is there an average amount of time, Jan Helen, that it takes to work on a murder case? Is it a number of hours, days?<br /> <br /> JM: Usually, I have three different meetings. The first meeting I make the cold call. Then I type things into my computer and send them. Then the next thing is usually the police have me come in, and I go through more information I might have. The detective might have maybe three questions. I usually tell them not to talk at all. I don't like them to talk about anything.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And, occasionally I have a question, like why couldn't the victim get out of the bed, and I remember that they said because the victim was in a wheel chair, so he couldn't run away from the problem. Then after that, then usually I go to the site, the murder site. So, that's about it, four ...<br /> <br /> P: I see. I see.<br /> <br /> JM: Four different times. And it can be maybe two to four hours when I meet them. Maybe two hours at the meeting, and a couple hours to go to the murder site and maybe drive by some other area where maybe something to do with the crime that the police officer wants to show me. The initial meeting on the phone, that's just pretty brief, and then I send out my information that I type up, and that's usually &amp;ndash; I usually write one to two full pages. And then, when I call again then we schedule a meeting. Because usually as a result of what I've written, I have so much accuracy that then they schedule a meeting with me. Stuff that nobody could know.<br /> <br /> P: Do you ever encounter police who are hostile to working with you?<br /> <br /> JM: Of course!<br /> <br /> P: Don't want to hear what you have to say, hang up, et cetera.<br /> <br /> JM: Almost all of them. Almost all of them don't want to hear what I have to say. Because there's a lot of scam psychics call them, and a lot of them have never worked with anybody like me before. But I have a Master of Arts degree, and I'm a music teacher, and I have a reputation to uphold, and I have really good references. So, pretty much a good detective, though, is always going to listen to anything someone tells them. They might not go on for the six to eight, maybe six to eight hours it takes to talk to me, but they're sure going to take the information. Briefly, at least.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: But then once I tell them things that nobody knows ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... then they all go further with me.<br /> <br /> S: Jan Helen, it was a pleasure to have you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thank you for sharing all of that with us. I look forward to working with you in the future. It sounds like we have an agreement that you will do a investigative murder case under our observation, so we can basically tally your accuracy. We'll be in touch off the air with the details, but that is excellent. I'm looking forward to doing that.<br /> <br /> JM: Try to pick the victim being a male instead female.<br /> <br /> S: Victim a male. Any details you want we will do. We always try to design these ...<br /> <br /> JM: I can do either.<br /> <br /> S: ... to accomodate the claimant as much as possible. <br /> <br /> JM: Disregard that. I'll do anybody.<br /> <br /> P: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: It's all right.<br /> <br /> S: But we want you to feel as comfortable as possible. Whatever details will make you ...<br /> <br /> JM: When I like when they're bad guys.<br /> <br /> S: Bad guys.<br /> <br /> JM: But you don't have to find bad guys killing bad guys. Whatever you want to do. I'll do any cases, because it's real important to me to help society as much as I possibly can.<br /> <br /> P: Excellent.<br /> <br /> S: Great! Well thanks again.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, thank you.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> JM: Bye.<br /> <br /> === Discussion &lt;small&gt;(1:01:30)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, that was our first interview with a non-skeptic. It was quite interesting. What did you guys think of Jan Helen?<br /> <br /> P: I thought she was very lively. I thought she was very interesting, and of course the thing I take away from this is her agreement to be tested ...<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: ... by the New England Skeptical Society.<br /> <br /> S: That's going to be the only way to get anything meaningful out of this in scientifically. I mean, her claims are so glowing. She thinks she has a hundred percent accuracy?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred percent accuracy. That's what she said.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. When you start saying your predictions, if they didn't come true they will in the future in some indefinite time, then you could easily believe that, &quot;hey, I'm hundred percent&quot;. I never make a mistake if you leave it wide open to the future.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But, Bob, remember she said in the interview when she deals with these murder cases, she's looking only into the past. So, it has happened. She claimed a hundred percent accuracy to that, with no pleading to any future predictions.<br /> <br /> S: You guys are both referring to comments she made to us ... <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... while we were'nt recording. But when she makes predictions, sometimes they are predictions of the future, and that's why they may not be true at that moment, but when she does do her murder cases, she's always looking into the past. But we'll propose to her two tests, actually. The simple one will be for her to &amp;ndash; she can basically detect medical symptoms or ailments. She did it for us over the phone, in fact. That will be very easy to test. And then, the next time we have a viable murder case that's regionally convenient, geographically convenient, then we need to get her to list all of her predictions ahead of time before the details of the case are known, and then we'll compare that list to whatever details eventually come to light, point by point. She won't get to pick and choose or morph them to fit what ultimately happens or just remember the hits and forget the misses. It will be instructive. As usual, the most instructive thing will be how she responds after the test is completed. But we will see. We did get her to agree to a test. So, stay tuned for her episode.<br /> <br /> P: Not only did she agree, she seemed eager.<br /> <br /> S: She seemed eager. My impression is that she really believes in her abilities. I got a little bit of a sense of a fantasy-prone personality from some of the history that she gave. So I think she's probably sincere. I think just ...<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, (unintelligible) .<br /> <br /> S: It sounds like she does a little bit of a cold reading when she sits down with the detectives to glean some of the details of the case. She works with detectives who believe in her ability, so that makes cold reading real easy, when you're dealing with a subject who is predisposed to believing in your abilities. But, again, sitting here all we can do is speculate. We need to gather some first-hand information, and we'll do that. We tried to bait her with the million dollars, and she didn't seem too eager about that. That's actually a little bit of a red flag. I would think that if someone genuinely believed in their own powers, especially if they think they are a hundred percent, that they would be most eager to snatch up that million dollars.<br /> <br /> P: I have never heard anybody with a paranormal claim of any kind say anything good about Randi's challenge.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: Never! &quot;He doesn't do it right. He sets it up so you can't win&quot;. They hate it. They hate him, and they hate it.<br /> <br /> E: What they don't realize ...<br /> <br /> S: Because what he does is scientifically accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> B: It makes them look so bad. Think about it. That's such a huge thing that he's willing to give anyone a million dollars.<br /> <br /> E: Right. Folks, just so you know, what he wants you to do, in your application for the million-dollar challenge is state what you can do and with what percent &amp;ndash; what degree of success. And that's basically all the information he's looking for. And most of the applicants can not answer those questions.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: And they cannot put into a cohesive statement.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But we'll do that. I've made up several protocols now to screen applicants for that. It's a negotiation. It's a discussion back and forth to get them to coalesce their claims into something tangible and to come up with a way to score it and a threshold for what we would consider to be success. One guy &amp;ndash; it was interesting &amp;ndash; one guy wasn't sure why we weren't going to use a P-value of .05, which basically means a one-in-twenty chance of having a positive result by random chance alone. Well, you know, Randi can't give a million dollars to every twentieth person that he tests ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... the psychic challenge. But anyway, so we'll do that. And if she wants to, we could screen her for the Randi Challenge, and if she passes, we'll be happy to pass her along to Randi. But no one apparently has ever gotten through the screening phase of the challenge. So again, we'll definitely follow up on this in the future. We're also having discussions with the detective on this particular case. He may or may not come on the show on a future episode, but we'll at least talk to him about the case and see if we can get some further details. He was not available for tonight.<br /> <br /> S: Well guys, it was another fun episode. Thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Our pleasure as usual.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}} <br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |ESP = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_23&diff=9610 2015-01-31T18:14:39Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Interview with Jan Helen McGee, Psychic Detective */ Spelling</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 23<br /> |episodeDate = 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = JM: {{w|Jan Helen McGee}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-21-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, December twenty-first, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me tonight are Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Perry DeAngelis ...<br /> <br /> P: Good evening.<br /> <br /> S: and Bob Novella.<br /> <br /> B: Hello.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> <br /> === Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District Decision &lt;small&gt;(0:23)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: The news today, the big news this week is victory in Dover.<br /> <br /> P: Yaaaayyyy!<br /> <br /> B: Whoo-hooo!<br /> <br /> S: Judge John Jones handed down a hundred and thirty-nine page <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District decision]],<br /> and this is the case &amp;ndash; the name of the case is ''Tammy Kitzmiller, et. al. vs. the Dover Area School District''.<br /> This was regarding the teaching of [[wikipedia:Intelligent_design|intelligent design]] we've been talking about over the last few months. This is the eagerly-awaited decision. I don't think there was really much doubt, at least not in my mind, that the judge was going to decide against the school district, basically ruling that teaching of intelligent design in the public schools is unconstitutional. The real question was how broad or narrow his decision was going to be. I've perused at lot of the 139-page decision, and I've got to tell you this judge did not leave a stone unturned. This was, I think, the broadest decision we could have hoped for. <br /> <br /> B: I wonder what kind of help he had. Going through a court case like that, I'm sure you end up well-versed in the topic, but I wonder what outside sources he approached in coming up with this. I mean, he didn't write this 139-page himself, did he? I'm sure he's got guys that ...<br /> <br /> P: Everyone's got clerks.<br /> <br /> B: ... sum up everything.<br /> <br /> S: He as staff. He had six weeks of testimony. <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: He had a lot of precedence, a lot of cases that he was summarizing. He actually took the time to go through the history of creationism in this country and the history of the legal cases. A lot of it was material he would have had available to him. And then the rest is commenting specifically on testimony that was given before him. <br /> <br /> P: Right. Which is what he should do. He should base his decision on the case presented to him.<br /> <br /> S: A few things that struck me, reading through it &amp;ndash; actually many things, but some things that I think are very significant. The judge, who again I think was trying to really establish an iron-clad decision here that cannot be circumvented. He commented specifically on the fact that ID (Intelligent Design) has historical connections to Creationism. And multiple times in the decision he wrote that a reasonable person assessing this, understanding the cultural and historical context – very, very specifically was putting intelligent design into its historical context – saying, again, tying it to its religious antecedents. There was some specific pieces of information he cited, for example, the ''Of Pandas and People''<br /> &lt;ref&gt;''Of Pandas and People'' &lt;/ref&gt;<br /> book that was specifically referred to in the Dover law, basically saying that you have to teach intelligent design in the public schools. There were multiple drafts of this book available, and one draft &amp;ndash; earlier drafts used the word ''creationism,'' I think a hundred and fifty times. And the final draft was essentially was a search-and-replace &amp;ndash; replaced the word ''creationism'' with the words ''intelligent design.''<br /> <br /> B: And not only that, the timing was significant. When it was changed.<br /> <br /> S: And that occurred right after the legal case that basically said that creationism could not be taught in public schools. So, they said &quot;OK, lets change the work 'creationism' for 'intelligent design' and try again.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, I'm not sure if you're aware the circumstances under which the book got into the school was very, very shady. It was kind of like laundered in a sense, in the description that I read, where somebody involved, he had somebody buy the book and give it to the schools or something. It was a little underhanded from what ...<br /> <br /> S: It was very contrived.<br /> <br /> B: ... I gathered Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So if you may recall, guys, when [SGU_Episode_15 Chris Mooney] was on the show, we were talking about this topic, because he had been covering from a journalistic point of view, covering the trial. He noted that one concern is that – where the creationists are going to go next? assuming they lose this fight, which they did. What's their next move?<br /> <br /> B: I didn't think of that, yet.<br /> <br /> S: His concern was that &quot;what if they just try to mandate a criticism of evolution?&quot; Teaching the gaps and the flaws in evolutionary theory.<br /> <br /> B: Go right ahead.<br /> <br /> S: But not promoting the teaching of intelligent design, or anything that could be overtly religious. The judge in this case, Judge Jones, actually already kind of addressed that issue, and he said that specifically mandating teaching about the gaps or flaws in evolution only serves a religious purpose. And, again, he made that historical connection to Creationism. It is a strategy employed by creationists, and that was enough to link it to Creationism. I was very heartened by that. He's basically saying that the creationists can't just keep morphing their strategy from A to B to C to D and think that they're starting with a clean slate each time. Basically, they're not fooling anyone. Whatever it morphs into next is still Creationism, because the law, the judge in this case, said it is perfectly legitimate legalistically to put whatever it morphs into into its historical context. So that's good. I mean it basically ...<br /> <br /> E: Very astute.<br /> <br /> S: However you try to play the game, we have your number, and it's not going to work.<br /> <br /> B: Excellent! I've got a little clip here from his argument, from his paper. The part of it that I really focused on and I was really interested in is the fact that it's just so not science, it's pathetic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: How hard can it really be to say &quot;Look, this is not science. Therefore, regardless of anything else, it doesn't belong in the classroom.&quot; And he's got three points here: ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: That's a bigee. That's kind of important right there. The second one is the argument of irreducible complexity, central to intelligent design, employs the same flawed and illogical, contrived, dualism that doomed Creation science in the eighties.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: This next one ties into what you recently said, Steve. &quot;Intelligent design's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.&quot; That's it. All this negative stuff you're saying about evolution: it's not one scientific theory against another. The scientific community unilaterally has said &quot;Wrong! This stuff is just not true.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: That's right, and I think in the part of his decision he specifically mentions the testimony regarding <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe Behe's]]<br /> favorite example: the flagellum. He says it's irreducibly complex. And yet, scientists gave testimony that in the five years or six years since Behe first proposed that example, that more of the evolution of the flagellum, and I think also of the immune system, has been flushed out. His claim that's it's irreducibly complex has been proven false since he made those claims. New research has been done to show that.<br /> <br /> B: And he knows that, come on!<br /> <br /> S: He does.<br /> <br /> B: You know he knows that.<br /> <br /> S: Which pegs him as being disingenuous, and again the judge was very scathing about the ID proponents basically saying that they were not sincere in their position.<br /> <br /> P: To say the least, that's what he said, yes.<br /> <br /> B: Right. I've got some other interesting pullouts here that I've gleaned.<br /> <br /> S: Well, before you move on, I want to just comment on some of things you just brought up, some of the points. For example, the supernatural aspect of intelligent design, and the judge spent a lot of time writing about that, and that's critical also, because as we said before, the intelligent design proponents are not simply presenting intelligent design as science. They are trying to redefine science to include supernatural explanations, and the judge spent a lot of time addressing that specific point. First of all, he pointed out that every single ID defendant in the case admitted that there is no intelligent design without a supernaturalism. Therefore, it does not meet the conventional definition of science. They admitted it! Then he explained very carefully why supernaturalism equals religion. And why it is not admissible in the halls of science. The two are incompatible. So he very specifically made that decision. Again, this is absolutely critical to this whole debate. Again, as we discussed before, you can't change the rules of science. They are the way they are by necessity.<br /> <br /> B: That was the most egregious thing.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: The fact that they were even attempting to redefine science. Steve, there's another thing. The judge asked a lot of the Board members, he asked them about intelligent design, and almost all of them didn't even really know any details, they couldn't even describe it to the judge, and he was so taken aback by that. The best that one member said to him was that its &quot;things are designed intelligently.&quot; These are people ...<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: It's intelligent design<br /> <br /> B: Talk about sheep! I mean, do this and say this. OK. My, God!. They didn't even bother, even months later, bother to study up on intelligent design so they can talk intelligently about it in court!<br /> <br /> S: They didn't even do their homework before court.<br /> <br /> E: They apparently totally underestimated the judge.<br /> <br /> B: Or over estimated their counsel.<br /> <br /> S: So I imagine there has been an interesting response from the ID proponents after such a scathing and devastating decision against them.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I've been looking for some response. There's been some, and I assume in the future it will start coming out as to what they want to do. A couple of things I got here is: one of the guys at the [[wikipedia:Discovery_Institute|Discovery Institute]], [[wikipedia:John_G._West|John West]], a senior fellow, says that &quot;Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution. He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur.&quot; Now obviously, he didn't read the judge's paper. He made a point of saying &quot;I am not an activist judge, and this is not an activist bench.&quot; Look at the past decisions he's made, and that's just not what he is.<br /> <br /> S: He's a conservative judge who's actually a G. W. Bush appointee, by the way, who's religious. The judge is.<br /> <br /> B: Really? I did not know that.<br /> <br /> S: He says he's not an activist judge. The school board that tried to impose the religious views on a public school system, they were being activist, and they overstepped their bounds, and they did not serve the public well. He's absolutely right. Of course the Discovery Institute and the ID proponents are going to be crying like babies about this decision, but they have nothing to say. He's trying to redefine science. Hello! They're the ones who are trying to redefine science. He had centuries of precedence to establish the separation of supernaturalism from natural causes in science. Centuries of precedence, basically since the dawn of science. That is the division between science and religion.<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So it just tells you how vacuous and just intellectually dishonest their position is.<br /> <br /> B: It is. And here's another one. Richard Thompson, the lawyer for the Dover Area School, said that &quot;this judge should not place himself in a position of determining which scientific theory is valid and which is not.&quot; That's the first part of his quote, which is so ridiculous because that statement assumes that you've got two scientific theories, when, sorry, one of them is not a scientific theory.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The premise is wrong ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. The premise is wrong.<br /> <br /> S: ... and the conclusion is wrong. The other premise there is that judges don't decide the validity of science in the courtroom? Of course they do. They do that every day. They hear expert testimony, and they decide which scientific testimony is legitimate. The judge painstakingly went through all of the testimony on both sides, and showed on every single point the plaintiffs expert witnesses, the defenders of evolution and science, absolutely crushed the ID proponents, who just committed logical fallacy after logical fallacy.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> S: The fact is, when you're in a court of law, when there are rules of evidence and logic, and you are dealing with people who are experts in logic &amp;ndash; lawyers are, if nothing else, experts in logic. That is their skill. That is what they do. You can't get away with anything, and the judge saw through every single one of their misdirections, every single one of their illogical statements. And that's it. They were called on it. And this is what happened ...<br /> <br /> B: Time and again ...<br /> <br /> S: ... in every single creationism case that has gotten to the high courts, is that under the rules of evidence of a courtroom, the creationist argument falls like the tissue paper that it's made of.<br /> <br /> B: Here's another one from Richard Thompson, the lawyer. He said &quot;It should be left up to the debate that the scientific community was involved with.&quot; He's leaving it to the scientific community? Hello! I think they already made their decision. There is no debate within the scientific community.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The scientific community is united in their position that ID is not science. They're also trying desperately to portray this as a debate between two different scientific ideas. Again, the premise is wrong. ID is not science. Again, and the judge very clearly explained exactly why that is. It fails the test for science in multiple ways. One, it allows supernatural explanations. Two, it's not testable, and he asked that question of Behe and the others who were ID experts in the case: &quot;Tell me a way in which intelligent design can be subjected to a scientific test.&quot; Everything that they proposed, he said was actually just a really a test of evolution, not a test of ID. And again they were falling back on this false dualism, saying that if it's not evolution then ID, which is the false dichotomy logical fallacy, and therefore they were misinterpreting or misrepresenting scientific tests of evolution as if they were tests of intelligent design. In fact, there are no possible tests of intelligent design, because it's not a scientific theory. Interestingly, as we're wrapping up this topic, two days ago, so the day before the Dover decision, there was an article, an editorial published by one-time Presidential candidate and political commentator [[wikipedia:Pat_Buchanan|Pat Buchanan]]. Now, Buchanan has a reputation for being a bit of a political maverick, but here the name of his article was &quot;Darwinism On Defense,&quot; and it's basically an attack of evolution. <br /> <br /> P: Good timing with this article.<br /> <br /> S: It was good timing, right, but interestingly Buchanan who is otherwise, even if you disagree with his politics, he is on the fringe on a lot of issues. Even if you disagree with him, he usually is pretty careful about how he formulates his arguments and tries to avoid overt factual misstatements. But now he's stepping into the arena of evolution-creation debate, and he dredges up arguments that have been destroyed thirty, forty years ago. He clearly knows nothing about this topic. Let me give you a couple of examples that I thought were so egregious, really do him a great disservice. He basically reiterates the old argument that survival of the fittest is a [[wikipedia:Tautology_(rhetoric)|tautology]], because those who survive are defined as those who are the fittest, and those are the fittest are defined as those who survive, which is absurd. Those who are fittest are the ones who can run the fastest, reproduce the best, who have those list of traits which enable them to survive and reproduce. That's what makes them the fittest, and that's what's enables them to survive. So it's not a tautology. That's really a silly argument that has been destroyed decades ago, and he's drudging it up as if it is some kind of a new concept.<br /> <br /> B: And here's another one. He asks here or he states here &quot;And there are gaps in human evolution. Where are the missing links between lower and higher forms?&quot; Come on! Where's he getting his playbook? From thirty year-old creationist texts?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred years.<br /> <br /> S: He must be. There are no transitional forms? Please! How about there are transitional forms between whales and terrestrial mammals: [[wikipedia:Ambulocetus|ambulocetus]]. Where was he when that was discovered? How about: there are now dozens of feathered dinosaurs that are clearly occupying a morphological zone between dinosaurs and modern birds. He says &quot;there's no missing link between apes and man.&quot; Come on, how about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus australopithecus]? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis homo habilis]? [[wikipedia:Homo_erectus|homo erectus]]?There's basically a nice sequence of transitional forms. Again, it's not strictly linear. Evolution tends to branch out; it's bushy as Steven J. Gould used to say.<br /> <br /> B: Definitely not a (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> S: Still, it represents an evolutionary of nice, intricate vast evolutionary connection between modern man, homo sapiens, and our ape relatives. It's there! I mean, go to a museum! <br /> <br /> P: Steve, it's interesting that you point out at the beginning of this segment that Pat Buchanan normally, regardless of what you think of his politics, is normally a careful thinker and constructs his arguments with thought. But when you get into these subjects, he obviously invested. He's emotional about it.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: And his &amp;ndash; really his critical truths fall by the wayside. It's obvious by what he wrote.<br /> <br /> S: Right. He basically did a hack job in that article, which is different than his usual writing.<br /> <br /> P: Right. Because he let his emotions get away with him. He needs this to be true.<br /> <br /> S: Well lets all savor this moment. This was a stunning, definitive victory ...<br /> <br /> E: It's a Christmas miracle.<br /> <br /> S: ... for evolution and for science and for our society. Really put the intelligent design on the ropes.<br /> <br /> B: True, but I want to see this in the Supreme Court.<br /> <br /> S: That would be nice, but this is still a federal district court.<br /> <br /> B: It is. Great, but man, I want the highest court.<br /> <br /> S: This is still precedence. It may not be definitive law nationally like a Supreme Court decision would, but it is still a very powerful precedence.<br /> <br /> P: It is a very powerful precedent, and he went above and beyond.<br /> <br /> S: He did.<br /> <br /> P: He was merciless on the ID side.<br /> <br /> B: It was a great way to end 2005, I think.<br /> <br /> S: Kudos to Judge John Jones.<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Judge.<br /> <br /> P: Hear, hear.<br /> <br /> == Interview with Jan Helen McGee, Psychic Detective ==<br /> <br /> === Interview &lt;small&gt;(20:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: And so joining us now is [http://www.janhelenmcgee.com Jan Helen McGee]&lt;ref&gt;[[http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=172.0 Follow up forum comments on Jan Helen McGee]]&lt;/ref&gt;. Jan Helen, as she tells us she likes to be called, was involved recently in a murder investigation. She is a physic detective who investigated the case of the murder of Mark Arnold. The murder occurred in 1993. She assisted Detective Paul Zechman in the case, and according to newspaper reports, etc., provided the probable location of the murderer, who was then found. The murderer was Robert Wise. So, Helen, Jan Helen, I'm sorry, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> JM: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you for joining us and agreeing to be confronted by four skeptics.<br /> <br /> JM: Ha, ha. You're pretty good with the Helen part, too, because Helen, my middle name, is the name that I've always used when I work on these cases. It's only recently that I've decided to talk about my involvement. It's always been a secret. The only police officer or detective that knew my real name was my direct link. The rest of the detectives that were working on the case only knew me as &quot;Helen&quot;.<br /> <br /> S: I see. Why don't you tell us about this case? Just start from the beginning and tell us how you got involved.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I had worked very peripherally on a case prior to this with some detectives in my town, [[wikipedia:Lebanon,_Pennsylvania|Lebanon, Pennsylvania]], another murderer in [[wikipedia:Palmyra,_Pennsylvania|Palmyra]]? This was the first big case I worked on. What happened was I had a dream. Frankly, my whole life I've had murder dreams. I didn't connect them with actual murders until it became quite clear in 1993. That night, before I started working on the case, I had a really scary dream, and I woke up my then husband and told him about the dream. Frankly, he woke up because I gasped from the fear that I had about the dream because I saw the actual murder. I told him the whole story of the dream and the murder, went back to sleep, and then in the morning I had this strong desire to go get a newspaper, which is something I never did &amp;ndash; drive to go get a paper. So I did, and when I picked up the paper, there on the front page was a picture of the building, and it was just a one-room shack-type building, and it was exactly like in my dream. I brought it home, and everything in the article was exactly as I had described it in the dream, and my husband at the time just kept pushing me. He said &quot;You just have to call the police&quot;. You can't, you don't have another choice.&quot; So I made a call to the local county detectives, and told him the things from the dream and then some other information. Then I went on my computer and typed up some added information, some thoughts that I had, and sent those to him.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: After that, I went in to his office and talked to him. Then, we sort of both decided I would go to the site, to the murder site, and see if I had any more insights. So then one Saturday morning, I went in to &amp;ndash; met them at the municipal building, and the chief county detective, Paul Zechman, took me in to a room that was just filled with detectives, maybe between five and eight of them, because what they were doing that day was they had decided to close down the site. The site had been open for several weeks, since this was a few weeks after the murder that this happened. And they were doing their very last collection. Somebody was coming down from Harrisburg to do some blood collection, and they were forensic people. This was like the last of the forensic, the last time to go on the site before they released it back to the owner. I got in there into that room, and there were all these detectives, and they were very, very unhappy because they had to work early, it was like 7:30 on a Saturday morning. They also weren't very happy to see me.<br /> <br /> S: Do they get many murders in that town, or was this maybe a first for them?<br /> <br /> JM: No, there's murder's in this town. I think it's a town of thirty thousand, so there's a murder every year. It doesn't have a high crime rate, but it doesn't have a real low crime rate. The city itself, even though I live in the county, the city itself has some trouble. So they weren't totally new to it. But I would say it's a pretty safe town, relatively safe, small town outside of Harrisburg. I was in that room, and Paul Zechman said &quot;OK, Helen, tell everybody what you told me.&quot; And then he left me in that room. I just sat down and I proceeded to tell the other detectives what I felt I knew about the case. One of the things that I was obsessed with that really had no meaning on the case, necessarily, but seemed very, very important to me, and it was a pathway, I think, so I guess in retrospect it's a little bit important, because it led me down a path. But one thing I saw in this one-room building was that the victim had over twenty-five black, rotary phones.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Those phones from the forties. And I just couldn't believe it, and I just kept talking about these phones. Finally I realized that only one of the phones was hooked up, and that he talked constantly, sat at his desk, and he talked constantly on the phone. And then I sort of got to the point where I felt that he was talking to his best friend on the phone. And then that's how I reached the conclusion that his best friend had killed him.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. What was the significant of the black rotary phone in the actual case?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, there really wasn't any. After I told the detectives in the room the things I knew, then we all packed up went out to the site, and it was snowing. There was some snow on the ground, and everybody was sort of milling around, and I was just walking around. One of the other detectives insisted that I look inside this building, and I really didn't want to, because, as it just sounds so bizarre, but when I saw the murder, and this isn't just in my dream, because I remember very little of my dreams. But when I see these murders, I sometimes switch from the victim to the killer, and then sometimes I sort of float. When I saw this all happening, I was sort of &amp;ndash; this just sounds so bizarre &amp;ndash; I was sort of floating above the floor as I watched it, and it's very &amp;ndash; it makes me feel physically ill when I go through these scenes and work on these cases. So I really didn't want to revisit that part. I felt I had told enough of it, but this one detective just insisted I look in there. Before I looked in, another thing that I knew about was that these two men had shared a meal together before the one killed the other. So when he opened the door and I looked inside the one-room building, I was quite shocked myself, because I didn't know that I was really &amp;ndash; I didn't have a clue that I was good at this. I just was driven to share my information. And when I looked in there, there were over twenty-five &amp;ndash; I've never seen so many black rotary phones. They were everywhere. They were on the chair. This was sort of a messy place. They were on the chair. They were on the counter. They were on the bookshelf. They were on every available surface &amp;ndash; had a black rotary phone. And then to the left was the desk that I had envisioned and the phone that was actually working. And then it was really creepy for me, because I looked over to the stove &amp;ndash; there was a stove in there &amp;ndash; and on the stove was a big pan with congealed meat.<br /> <br /> S: You mentioned that you don't remember what you dreamed but you re-live the murder in a vision. So this a waking vision that you get?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. The best way I can describe it to people, because a lot of people always want to know how do I see things. To me it's like a memory. Say for example you're in a grocery store, and you see someone, and they ring a bell. You say &quot;I think I know that person, but I don't know how or who they are.&quot; Then you walk, maybe around to the next aisle, and all of a sudden, you start realizing that that person went to school with you. And then you go down another pathway of memory that says &quot;Oh, that's right. It was middle school.&quot; And the next path might be &quot;Oh, it was Mrs. Jackson's room.&quot; And then suddenly you realize that it was art class, you can see, even though it might be twenty, thirty years ago, the memory just comes at you like it was yesterday. You can smell the room. You can see who's sitting next to you. You can remember the nervous habits of Mrs. Jackson, and then just the whole room opens up.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: To me, it's just like a memory. I go back a pathway, sometimes. I mean, sometimes things come very clearly. This case, even though I was obsessed with the fact that after this man killed his friend, he went outside and smoked a cigarette, tried to figure out what he was going to do, and then decided to steal his friend's identity, because he wanted to be his friend. But then I remembered that I was standing &amp;ndash; they were ready to close the site, and I was just standing there with Paul Zechman, and suddenly he said &quot;Where did he go?&quot; And that's when I told him he went to the beach. To me, it's not only my visions, if you want to call them, but also other's people's interpretations of what I say. Because I really think that in any kind of murder case, there are teams, and I feel like I was an important part of this team, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... but just a part of the team nonetheless. Just one puzzle piece. A puzzle can't be put together without lots of pieces, and I was one puzzle piece. If he hadn't asked me where he went, I might not even have mentioned that.<br /> <br /> S: But until he asked that question, had you had any visions about where he went after the murder?<br /> <br /> JM: No, because I was so upset that he killed his best friend, and then it's just not very pleasant, but I become the murderer.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I see their reasoning, and I find them very &amp;ndash; I sort of get on their side, as awful as it sounds, and the killer wanted to be the victim. As messed up as that sounds ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... he wanted to be his best friend. He adored his family. He was divorced, but his ex-wife, the victim's ex-wife was very, very solicitous towards him, took care of him, checked in on him, he had a lovely son. The killer wanted his son. He wanted his family. He wanted his life. He ended up stealing his car. I found out later he stole his car, his stole his wallet, he stole his whole identity. I was obsessed with them being best friends. I could hardly get past the fact that you would have a lovely meal with your best friend, and then he would just kill you. Without Paul's question, I don't know if I ever would have gone there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But when he asked the question, did you have a vision at that moment, or the information was with you already?<br /> <br /> JM: It just came right out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I hadn't even thought about it. It just came right out of my mouth. I said &quot;He's at the beach.&quot; And then I just thought it was so bizarre, because there was snow all over the ground. Who would go to the beach in the snow? And then I could see that he had gone to the beach when he was a child, and this was a safe place for him. So I told Paul that I didn't think he was at the Jersey beach. Now here in this town, when people vacation, they always go to the New Jersey beach.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: So that would be the first thought. He's definitely not at the New Jersey beach, but I thought it was either [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehoboth_Beach,_Delaware Rehovoth Beach, Delaware] or Ocean City, Maryland. And then I was suddenly &amp;ndash; it was just like I realized he was definitely there.<br /> <br /> S: At one of those two places.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Now I said &quot;Are they close?&quot; And Paul said they were sort of close. Because when I do this work I become very right-brained, and I have to sort of float. It's like &amp;ndash; I'm a musician, I'm a music teacher, and when I play music, and really want to interpret it properly, I have to get into my right-brained activity, and I have to act sort of floaty. And that's the same thing that I have to do here. Any left-brain activity sort of leads me. There's lot's of things I don't quite get when I'm working on cases.<br /> <br /> S: I see, so you're not good with directions when you're in this state.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I don't even like driving. I don't like being in charge of anything. I just like to sort of just let myself go, like you do when you're falling asleep. Sort of.<br /> <br /> S: Now is this something you've always been able to do, say when you were a little girl?<br /> <br /> JM: Sure. The first memory I have is I lived in a row house up until I was two, so this was before I was two years old. I remember waking up in my crib and standing up and feeling the urge to cry for my mother, but then I remember being able to see through the walls and see through the floor and see where she was in the house, so that I didn't have to cry because I knew that she was in the house with me and I didn't have to be afraid and that she would come. Then the next memory that I have is I must have been about kindergarten age, because I remember the sequence was that I asked my mother if I could go in the front yard alone. She'd let me in the back yard alone, but not in the front yard alone, because it was a busy street out front. And then I remember she finally decided that I was old enough. So maybe I was even six, but probably five, because I remember I walked to school alone in first grade when I was six, so I was probably kindergarten age. And she let me go in the front yard. And I used to go behind this big, big, fat tree that I could completely hide behind, and I would move around the tree and stare at the neighbors, and I remember that I could see through the tree and see through their walls and watch what they were doing. And we had ladies that were widows, and three of them were widows, and they really led a pretty boring life, so I didn't really like watching them.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: But right next door to us was a family that was totally out of control, and so mostly I would go in the front. In retrospect, it seems so odd, but I would stand there with my back to the tree, but I would look back through the tree and so that I could sort of lean against the tree, and my face didn't have to be against the tree and so I could look back through the tree and through the house, and the mother would always be screaming and she would throw herself on the stairs and cry and then the husband would come down the steps and he'd yell and then he'd slam the door and go out to his car and peel away down the alley.<br /> <br /> S: Did you have any other paranormal experiences as a child or older? Have you ever seen a ghost, for example?<br /> <br /> JM: (laughs) I don't really ... I ... I see dead people. I don't really like the term &quot;ghost&quot;, because it has such a bad connotation. I don't see lots of dead people. I don't really like to see dead people or to talk to dead people or have them talk to me, but I do. But not very often. And I think I always have known when there were ghosts in houses. I could pass houses when I was in the car and see which ones &amp;ndash; I remember seeing &quot;Oh, that one has a ghost.&quot; and &quot;That one's haunted.&quot; That's what I guess I could deem a friendly ghost, ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... and that's an unsettled ghost. I always consider them unsettled when they're not very happy.<br /> <br /> S: So do they ever talk to you?<br /> <br /> JM: Dead people?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. But not in the way that live people talk to me. I get these messages, and they're just &amp;ndash; it's information. The only way I can think to explain it is I really believe that it's the historical speaking in tongues ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... when I give information, because my brain doesn't feel like it's giving the information. I feel like it's coming through my body, like my body is like a radio or a conduit for the information. So it's not like I actually hear someone's voice that has died. I just get the information and then it comes out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: But I really don't like dealing with dead people. It's just something I can do like an artist.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Is it frightening or just unpleasant?<br /> <br /> JM: The murder cases are unpleasant, but I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for anybody else working on the case. Any of the police detectives or the forensic people or the coroner. I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for them. It's a very unpleasant job to have to do. Am I afraid? No, I'm never afraid. And I think that it makes me feel sick, but I don't think it makes feel any more sick than anybody else than an [[wikipedia:Emergency_medical_technician|EMT]] or anybody that has to deal with things like that.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: It's upsetting, but no more for me. I'm really not afraid of anything. I used to be afraid of the dreams, but what's so wonderful is that since that 1993 dream, I don't have murder dreams any more.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. That was the last one.<br /> <br /> JM: That was the last one, and I'd had them all my life, and so I think it's real important that I keep working on murder cases, because now my visions come during the day when I'm strong enough to deal with them, and I can have my nice peaceful sleep.<br /> <br /> B: What do you dream about now? Do you remember your dreams now?<br /> <br /> JM: Fun things. Vacations. Old boyfriends. Just normal things. Once in awhile I'll wake up with my jaw clenched and not quite know what it is. But it's usually just nothing, just nebulous dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Nothing that really means anything. Just worry dreams. I have a few of those dreams, like you are late for something. I constantly have this dream that I'm getting ready to go on vacation and I can't find the clothes to pack, and I'm going to miss the plane. Just those dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. Typical anxiety dreams.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Anxiety dreams. Right. But I don't have those murder any more. I'm so thrilled.<br /> <br /> S: So, again, we are talking to Jan Helen McGee. Evan, go ahead, you had a question for her?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah. Jan Helen, you mentioned other or at least alluded that you've worked on some other murder cases. How many have you worked on?<br /> <br /> JM: Well it's really hard to say, because until just recently I would just work on them and really not pay too much attention. I would say probably as much &amp;ndash; I work on them until I run out of energy. So maybe three to six murder cases a year since '93.<br /> <br /> E: Three to six.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Since 1993.<br /> <br /> E: What sort of successes have you experienced with those cases?<br /> <br /> JM: Frankly, I'm not sure, because what happens is I work on the case, and I tell all the information, and then I just walk out of the room and don't ever contact the police again, and I don't even care or find out. The only reason I found out about this case was because Paul Zechman was on a show called ''[[wikipedia:The_FBI_Files|The FBI Files]]'' on the Palmyra murder from this murder I had worked on previously. And after he finished filming that for New Dominion Pictures, they asked him if he knew of any psychics, and he told them about me, but said that I'm very private, and that he would call me, and when he did, I said &quot;Paul, of course not.&quot; I've kept this a secret. I don't want to talk to anybody, especially not television. And then there was silence and &quot;Oh, you want me to do this, right?&quot; And he said &quot;I think you should,&quot; because he knew that what my goal, one of my goals is to teach law enforcement to use their psychic ability. How to &amp;ndash; there's physical manifestations that we all have, that all psychics have, and I think that they can be pin-pointed, that they can pin-point psychics within law enforcement. So he said this will get you what you want.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: That's the only reason I know about this case.<br /> <br /> E: Sure. I'm just curious if you're curious at all about what could be deemed your rate of success as far as your psychics visions go and to how they actually turn out. Would you venture a guess maybe in a percentage of how often they are accurate?<br /> <br /> JM: I'd say a hundred. That doesn't mean that I solve every single case.<br /> <br /> E: No.<br /> <br /> JM: One time I worked on a robbery. I seldom work on robberies, but I remember early on, it was probably 1994 I worked on a robbery, and I called a cold call to a cop.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And he just flat out told me this was ridiculous. And I told him I don't know how it can harm you to write down what I say so I can get this out of my brain. So he did, and a year later he called me back, apologetic, and telling me every single thing I said was true, and he's so sorry, and he doesn't know why he acted like such a jerk. Other police, there's been cases that I've worked on that I know aren't solved, but part of it I think is that they didn't follow my advice. Paul Zechman trusted me and he did what I told him to do, and so if I give my information and the police do not do what I suggest, then it's not going to get solved. So as far as I'm concerned, I think my information is a hundred per cent. It's one of the few times in life I'm right.<br /> <br /> S: Can you turn your attention to a case and come up with information, or can you choose the cases, in other words, or do they choose you?<br /> <br /> JM: A little bit of both. Most of the time, I'll pick up the newspaper or I'll see something on the television, and then I'll say &quot;Oh, now. No, no. That's not the way it went.&quot; Or I'll know something, and then I'll just call. Sometimes, I've been called by police all over the state, and even out of state, for help, and then I can just work on that case. Occasionally, I don't know anything at all, but mostly I have something to go on.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think of other psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: I think most psychics are scam psychics.<br /> <br /> S: Most of them are not genuine.<br /> <br /> B: How do they work? How does their scams work?<br /> <br /> JM: You know, I think it's just like any other scam. Are you men scientists?<br /> <br /> S: Some of us.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Some by trade. Other by interest.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. By trade or interest. Right. So you have scientific thinking. So you know scam scientists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: They're scams in every walk of life, and they all work the same. They're very smart in that area, and they use tricks, and they BS.<br /> <br /> B: It's intentional. Sometimes it can be intentional, other times it can be more of a self-delusion, thinking they might think that they're not &amp;ndash; they might not be intentionally scamming, but sometimes they do. You come across all different types.<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly, but I don't think it's any different from any other scam, whether it's a scam lawyer, or ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... somebody says they're an FBI man, and they're scamming some girl. No matter what it is, he uses the exact same trick.<br /> <br /> S: So how can we tell the difference between the scam psychic detectives and the genuine psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, I'm coming out with a book that's called ''Psychic Surge: Don't Get Scammed''. Frankly, the book is over a hundred pages of all the different ways you have to go about to not get scammed. I think that it's just the same as a doctor. You need to find references. In my case, no police detective has ever worked with me without calling my references.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I have a profiler, which &amp;ndash; a profiler &amp;ndash; there's only two profilers in the state of Pennsylvania that I know of. And one of them vouches for me. And then, Paul Zechman always vouches for me. But have a whole long list now, but before I alway used the two of them. One thing is to find references. I think that you have to your instinct and your intellect if you are using a psychic because if you're like I was at the Hershey Hotel and sat down next to a psychic and she told me &amp;ndash; everything she told me was wrong, and it was clearly wrong. So I knew right away that she wasn't accurate. If she said six things, none of which are accurate, then I can see right there. I think you just can't let yourself get hoodwinked.<br /> <br /> S: Well, we certainly agree with that.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. It's just like any other scam person. You take their information, you check out their credentials, and use everything you can ... <br /> <br /> S: What would a credential be? In this field, there aren't really any credentials, because there is no gold standard. That begs the question that of course we're interested in as scientists and skeptics is how do we know if this phenomenon is even genuine at all from a scientific point of view, not necessarily from a personal point of view, but in the abstract.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I think most psychics are scam psychics, and as far as proof, do you love someone? Do you love someone?<br /> <br /> S: Of course I do.<br /> <br /> JM: But can you prove it?<br /> <br /> S: Well, that is not a scientific claim. If you make a claim about the facts of nature, that requires science. Making a claim about a subjective feeling is just completely different, so you really can't compare the two.<br /> <br /> JM: Well, this is a subjective feeling. If that's what you want to be ...<br /> <br /> S: But you have tangible &amp;ndash; but you are claiming tangible results, though, right?<br /> <br /> JM: But there are tangible results to love.<br /> <br /> S: The two types of claims are not comparable in terms of that analogy that you're trying to draw. Either a phenomenon is real or it isn't real. And if it's real, then there needs to be manifestations that can be objectively determined. Are you making the argument that there's no way science can ever validate your abilities?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: And why is that? Why would it be impossible to validate your abilities if they're real?<br /> <br /> JM: I think you could validate my results, like you validate the results of love.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Love makes you feel wonderful, love makes you kinder, more caring, and so you can go to Paul Zechman, a man who is the chief county detective in this town, a man who stakes his reputation on his good work, a man that you will see on the television show is a conservative, careful, slow-moving man, and he will tell you that I found his &amp;ndash; I enabled him to find his murderer.<br /> <br /> S: And we of course we accept that fact that he probably believes that, and again you knew coming in that we were skeptics and that ...<br /> <br /> JM: Oh, I don't mind.<br /> <br /> S: What our interpretation of all of this is a little bit different. We don't necessarily question people's motives or beliefs, because we can't read people's minds, so we don't know what people really think or believe. Our interest is on the tangible, verifiable results. We do know and just from experience with many, many different paranormal phenomenon that the capacity for people to be fooled by themselves, by events, is enormous, and the purpose of science is to essentially control for the really vast human tendency to deceive ourselves. Let me ask you a question. If we wanted to subject to some very basic common-sense controls to see if we could validate the results of your investigations, would you be willing to do that?<br /> <br /> JM: If I felt that &amp;ndash; I would be willing to do anything that was moving forward for good.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: I absolutely refuse to try to pick numbers or to try to make guesses, because my gift is not here to tell anybody something they already know.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: My gift is to find out what people don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Well let me give you an example. Because this is ...<br /> <br /> JM: Okay, and then I will tell you the way I think you should test me.<br /> <br /> S: Sure. Absolutely. When you get involved with a new case, really the only thing that we would need to do would be to record all of the information that you produced about the case before the investigation reaches it conclusion. And then in some sort of objective way compare what you predicted to what was actually discovered. That's all. It's very straight-forward.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, you can do national cases as far as I'm concerned. Every time there's a national case, you can call me and I can tell you if I know something and where we go, or you can just pick a case. You can find a case where you live. You don't have to tell me hardly anything. You can find an unsolved murder case and we can see if we can go down that avenue.<br /> <br /> S: That's great! I think that would be very instructive, and if your goal is to promote the use psychic detectives and to teach people how to use them correctly, this is the way to do it, in my opinion, because you could silence us, you could silence all the skeptics with verifiable data. That's really all we are asking for. In fact, we screen applicants for the Randi's Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. And we could do this as a screening test.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Because I really don't like the way he does things, because I just don't see how that's to humankind's good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, donate the money to charity. Do whatever you want with it. The point is it's a very public undeniable test.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. I don't have a problem with the money. I just don't want to do a test that is just not for the public good, because when I do any kind of work in this way, it takes a huge amount of energy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: And when I work on a murder case I often physically get ill.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: So, if I'm going to do this and takes this energy to try &amp;ndash; because I really don't have any interest in proving it to anyone.<br /> <br /> S: I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: It's just is. But I would be glad to work on more murder cases.<br /> <br /> S: That's great, but all we would ask is that you do what you're doing anyway. Do the cases that you're going to do anyway.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But we'll just verify them in a way that doesn't leave any room for guesswork. That we know that we can measure it in a scientific way the accuracy of the predictions that you make. <br /> <br /> JM: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We will allow you to set the parameters anyway you want to, as long as it allows for some objective observation and conclusions at the end.<br /> <br /> P: Jan Helen, you said you were going to give us a suggestion about how to test you. Out of curiosity, how would you test yourself?<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly like you said. I would like to work on murder cases, and you go ahead and find out how much of my information is accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's great! So we're in basic agreement. That's good.<br /> <br /> S: That's great. So we definitely would like to do that, because that I think it wasn't our purpose to debate with you here tonight. We really wanted to hear your experience and your side of the story.<br /> <br /> JM: Another thing that I can do is that if you physically put ten people in front of me I can probably tell what's physically wrong with all ten of them.<br /> <br /> S: You make like medical diagnoses?<br /> <br /> E: That's very testable.<br /> <br /> JM: I'm not a medicine person, but I can see what's wrong with them. What part of their body is weak ...<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> JM: ... has a weakness.<br /> <br /> JM: So you could ask all ten people what was wrong with them in advance, and you could see that.<br /> <br /> S: Give me an example of the kind of statement that you would make. You said what part of the body.<br /> <br /> JM: It usually just comes out with &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Okay, something like that &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> JM: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> S: Do you mention specific diseases like &quot;You have diabetes&quot;? That sort of thing.<br /> <br /> JM: No.<br /> <br /> S: No.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I'm not that accurate, because I'm not a medical person.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's just more basic symptoms.<br /> <br /> JM: No I can usually just see that bone, muscle, or blood, and if it's &amp;ndash; I can also see if it's inherited or if it was an injury.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, that's a lot more easy to test than going through an entire murder case and investigation and following it to its conclusion and then doing a comparison. I not saying we can't do that.<br /> <br /> S: Well, that would be another &amp;ndash; an easier test.<br /> <br /> E: Two different tests.<br /> <br /> S: But I think we should do both. They're different kinds of tests.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Right. And you know frankly, I just think I get a lot more power on the murder stuff, but I just know that's one other thing that I'm good at.<br /> <br /> E: Jan Helen, do you have to be in the room to see what's wrong with them, or do you it from afar, or you have to be in close proximity?<br /> <br /> JM: With the health problems, I usually like to be in a room with the person.<br /> <br /> E: In a room.<br /> <br /> JM: With the murder cases, I ... Murder cases I often start on the phone. But then when it starts to get upsetting, I usually like to be with a police officer, so I'm just wondering how that's going to go, but if we get to that point, there's no reason why you couldn't &amp;ndash; if there was a case, there's no reason why I couldn't also talk to the police officer and possibly they would let you be there, or have me continue with them. If it gets to that point, we'd want to continue and at least pass off my information to a detective.<br /> <br /> P: Is there an average amount of time, Jan Helen, that it takes to work on a murder case? Is it a number of hours, days?<br /> <br /> JM: Usually, I have three different meetings. The first meeting I make the cold call. Then I type things into my computer and send them. Then the next thing is usually the police have me come in, and I go through more information I might have. The detective might have maybe three questions. I usually tell them not to talk at all. I don't like them to talk about anything.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And, occasionally I have a question, like why couldn't the victim get out of the bed, and I remember that they said because the victim was in a wheel chair, so he couldn't run away from the problem. Then after that, then usually I go to the site, the murder site. So, that's about it, four ...<br /> <br /> P: I see. I see.<br /> <br /> JM: Four different times. And it can be maybe two to four hours when I meet them. Maybe two hours at the meeting, and a couple hours to go to the murder site and maybe drive by some other area where maybe something to do with the crime that the police officer wants to show me. The initial meeting on the phone, that's just pretty brief, and then I send out my information that I type up, and that's usually &amp;ndash; I usually write one to two full pages. And then, when I call again then we schedule a meeting. Because usually as a result of what I've written, I have so much accuracy that then they schedule a meeting with me. Stuff that nobody could know.<br /> <br /> P: Do you ever encounter police who are hostile to working with you?<br /> <br /> JM: Of course!<br /> <br /> P: Don't want to hear what you have to say, hang up, et cetera.<br /> <br /> JM: Almost all of them. Almost all of them don't want to hear what I have to say. Because there's a lot of scam psychics call them, and a lot of them have never worked with anybody like me before. But I have a Master of Arts degree, and I'm a music teacher, and I have a reputation to uphold, and I have really good references. So, pretty much a good detective, though, is always going to listen to anything someone tells them. They might not go on for the six to eight, maybe six to eight hours it takes to talk to me, but they're sure going to take the information. Briefly, at least.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: But then once I tell them things that nobody knows ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... then they all go further with me.<br /> <br /> S: Jan Helen, it was a pleasure to have you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thank you for sharing all of that with us. I look forward to working with you in the future. It sounds like we have an agreement that you will do a investigative murder case under our observation, so we can basically tally your accuracy. We'll be in touch off the air with the details, but that is excellent. I'm looking forward to doing that.<br /> <br /> JM: Try to pick the victim being a male instead female.<br /> <br /> S: Victim a male. Any details you want we will do. We always try to design these ...<br /> <br /> JM: I can do either.<br /> <br /> S: ... to accomodate the claimant as much as possible. <br /> <br /> JM: Disregard that. I'll do anybody.<br /> <br /> P: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: It's all right.<br /> <br /> S: But we want you to feel as comfortable as possible. Whatever details will make you ...<br /> <br /> JM: When I like when they're bad guys.<br /> <br /> S: Bad guys.<br /> <br /> JM: But you don't have to find bad guys killing bad guys. Whatever you want to do. I'll do any cases, because it's real important to me to help society as much as I possibly can.<br /> <br /> P: Excellent.<br /> <br /> S: Great! Well thanks again.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, thank you.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> JM: Bye.<br /> <br /> === Discussion &lt;small&gt;(1:01:30)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, that was our first interview with a non-skeptic. It was quite interesting. What did you guys think of Jan Helen?<br /> <br /> P: I thought she was very lively. I thought she was very interesting, and of course the thing I take away from this is her agreement to be tested ...<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: ... by the New England Skeptical Society.<br /> <br /> S: That's going to be the only way to get anything meaningful out of this in scientifically. I mean, her claims are so glowing. She thinks she has a hundred percent accuracy?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred percent accuracy. That's what she said.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. When you start saying your predictions, if they didn't come true they will in the future in some indefinite time, then you could easily believe that, &quot;hey, I'm hundred percent&quot;. I never make a mistake if you leave it wide open to the future.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But, Bob, remember she said in the interview when she deals with these murder cases, she's looking only into the past. So, it has happened. She claimed a hundred percent accuracy to that, with no pleading to any future predictions.<br /> <br /> S: You guys are both referring to comments she made to us ... <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... while we were'nt recording. But when she makes predictions, sometimes they are predictions of the future, and that's why they may not be true at that moment, but when she does do her murder cases, she's always looking into the past. But we'll propose to her two tests, actually. The simple one will be for her to &amp;ndash; she can basically detect medical symptoms or ailments. She did it for us over the phone, in fact. That will be very easy to test. And then, the next time we have a viable murder case that's regionally convenient, geographically convenient, then we need to get her to list all of her predictions ahead of time before the details of the case are known, and then we'll compare that list to whatever details eventually come to light, point by point. She won't get to pick and choose or morph them to fit what ultimately happens or just remember the hits and forget the misses. It will be instructive. As usual, the most instructive thing will be how she responds after the test is completed. But we will see. We did get her to agree to a test. So, stay tuned for her episode.<br /> <br /> P: Not only did she agree, she seemed eager.<br /> <br /> S: She seemed eager. My impression is that she really believes in her abilities. I got a little bit of a sense of a fantasy-prone personality from some of the history that she gave. So I think she's probably sincere. I think just ...<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, (unintelligible) .<br /> <br /> S: It sounds like she does a little bit of a cold reading when she sits down with the detectives to glean some of the details of the case. She works with detectives who believe in her ability, so that makes cold reading real easy, when you're dealing with a subject who is predisposed to believing in your abilities. But, again, sitting here all we can do is speculate. We need to gather some first-hand information, and we'll do that. We tried to bait her with the million dollars, and she didn't seem too eager about that. That's actually a little bit of a red flag. I would think that if someone genuinely believed in their own powers, especially if they think they are a hundred percent, that they would be most eager to snatch up that million dollars.<br /> <br /> P: I have never heard anybody with a paranormal claim of any kind say anything good about Randi's challenge.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: Never! &quot;He doesn't do it right. He sets it up so you can't win&quot;. They hate it. They hate him, and they hate it.<br /> <br /> E: What they don't realize ...<br /> <br /> S: Because what he does is scientifically accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> B: It makes them look so bad. Think about it. That's such a huge thing that he's willing to give anyone a million dollars.<br /> <br /> E: Right. Folks, just so you know, what he wants you to do, in your application for the million-dollar challenge is state what you can do and with what percent &amp;ndash; what degree of success. And that's basically all the information he's looking for. And most of the applicants can not answer those questions.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: And they cannot put into a cohesive statement.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But we'll do that. I've made up several protocols now to screen applicants for that. It's a negotiation. It's a discussion back and forth to get them to coalesce their claims into something tangible and to come up with a way to score it and a threshold for what we would consider to be success. One guy &amp;ndash; it was interesting &amp;ndash; one guy wasn't sure why we weren't going to use a P-value of .05, which basically means a one-in-twenty chance of having a positive result by random chance alone. Well, you know, Randi can't give a million dollars to every twentieth person that he tests ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... the psychic challenge. But anyway, so we'll do that. And if she wants to, we could screen her for the Randi Challenge, and if she passes, we'll be happy to pass her along to Randi. But no one apparently has ever gotten through the screening phase of the challenge. So again, we'll definitely follow up on this in the future. We're also having discussions with the detective on this particular case. He may or may not come on the show on a future episode, but we'll at least talk to him about the case and see if we can get some further details. He was not available for tonight.<br /> <br /> S: Well guys, it was another fun episode. Thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Our pleasure as usual.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}} <br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |ESP = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_23&diff=9609 2015-01-31T17:38:40Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* News Items */ Spelling and links</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 23<br /> |episodeDate = 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = JM: {{w|Jan Helen McGee}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-21-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, December twenty-first, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me tonight are Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Perry DeAngelis ...<br /> <br /> P: Good evening.<br /> <br /> S: and Bob Novella.<br /> <br /> B: Hello.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> <br /> === Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District Decision &lt;small&gt;(0:23)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: The news today, the big news this week is victory in Dover.<br /> <br /> P: Yaaaayyyy!<br /> <br /> B: Whoo-hooo!<br /> <br /> S: Judge John Jones handed down a hundred and thirty-nine page <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District decision]],<br /> and this is the case &amp;ndash; the name of the case is ''Tammy Kitzmiller, et. al. vs. the Dover Area School District''.<br /> This was regarding the teaching of [[wikipedia:Intelligent_design|intelligent design]] we've been talking about over the last few months. This is the eagerly-awaited decision. I don't think there was really much doubt, at least not in my mind, that the judge was going to decide against the school district, basically ruling that teaching of intelligent design in the public schools is unconstitutional. The real question was how broad or narrow his decision was going to be. I've perused at lot of the 139-page decision, and I've got to tell you this judge did not leave a stone unturned. This was, I think, the broadest decision we could have hoped for. <br /> <br /> B: I wonder what kind of help he had. Going through a court case like that, I'm sure you end up well-versed in the topic, but I wonder what outside sources he approached in coming up with this. I mean, he didn't write this 139-page himself, did he? I'm sure he's got guys that ...<br /> <br /> P: Everyone's got clerks.<br /> <br /> B: ... sum up everything.<br /> <br /> S: He as staff. He had six weeks of testimony. <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: He had a lot of precedence, a lot of cases that he was summarizing. He actually took the time to go through the history of creationism in this country and the history of the legal cases. A lot of it was material he would have had available to him. And then the rest is commenting specifically on testimony that was given before him. <br /> <br /> P: Right. Which is what he should do. He should base his decision on the case presented to him.<br /> <br /> S: A few things that struck me, reading through it &amp;ndash; actually many things, but some things that I think are very significant. The judge, who again I think was trying to really establish an iron-clad decision here that cannot be circumvented. He commented specifically on the fact that ID (Intelligent Design) has historical connections to Creationism. And multiple times in the decision he wrote that a reasonable person assessing this, understanding the cultural and historical context – very, very specifically was putting intelligent design into its historical context – saying, again, tying it to its religious antecedents. There was some specific pieces of information he cited, for example, the ''Of Pandas and People''<br /> &lt;ref&gt;''Of Pandas and People'' &lt;/ref&gt;<br /> book that was specifically referred to in the Dover law, basically saying that you have to teach intelligent design in the public schools. There were multiple drafts of this book available, and one draft &amp;ndash; earlier drafts used the word ''creationism,'' I think a hundred and fifty times. And the final draft was essentially was a search-and-replace &amp;ndash; replaced the word ''creationism'' with the words ''intelligent design.''<br /> <br /> B: And not only that, the timing was significant. When it was changed.<br /> <br /> S: And that occurred right after the legal case that basically said that creationism could not be taught in public schools. So, they said &quot;OK, lets change the work 'creationism' for 'intelligent design' and try again.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, I'm not sure if you're aware the circumstances under which the book got into the school was very, very shady. It was kind of like laundered in a sense, in the description that I read, where somebody involved, he had somebody buy the book and give it to the schools or something. It was a little underhanded from what ...<br /> <br /> S: It was very contrived.<br /> <br /> B: ... I gathered Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So if you may recall, guys, when [SGU_Episode_15 Chris Mooney] was on the show, we were talking about this topic, because he had been covering from a journalistic point of view, covering the trial. He noted that one concern is that – where the creationists are going to go next? assuming they lose this fight, which they did. What's their next move?<br /> <br /> B: I didn't think of that, yet.<br /> <br /> S: His concern was that &quot;what if they just try to mandate a criticism of evolution?&quot; Teaching the gaps and the flaws in evolutionary theory.<br /> <br /> B: Go right ahead.<br /> <br /> S: But not promoting the teaching of intelligent design, or anything that could be overtly religious. The judge in this case, Judge Jones, actually already kind of addressed that issue, and he said that specifically mandating teaching about the gaps or flaws in evolution only serves a religious purpose. And, again, he made that historical connection to Creationism. It is a strategy employed by creationists, and that was enough to link it to Creationism. I was very heartened by that. He's basically saying that the creationists can't just keep morphing their strategy from A to B to C to D and think that they're starting with a clean slate each time. Basically, they're not fooling anyone. Whatever it morphs into next is still Creationism, because the law, the judge in this case, said it is perfectly legitimate legalistically to put whatever it morphs into into its historical context. So that's good. I mean it basically ...<br /> <br /> E: Very astute.<br /> <br /> S: However you try to play the game, we have your number, and it's not going to work.<br /> <br /> B: Excellent! I've got a little clip here from his argument, from his paper. The part of it that I really focused on and I was really interested in is the fact that it's just so not science, it's pathetic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: How hard can it really be to say &quot;Look, this is not science. Therefore, regardless of anything else, it doesn't belong in the classroom.&quot; And he's got three points here: ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: That's a bigee. That's kind of important right there. The second one is the argument of irreducible complexity, central to intelligent design, employs the same flawed and illogical, contrived, dualism that doomed Creation science in the eighties.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: This next one ties into what you recently said, Steve. &quot;Intelligent design's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.&quot; That's it. All this negative stuff you're saying about evolution: it's not one scientific theory against another. The scientific community unilaterally has said &quot;Wrong! This stuff is just not true.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: That's right, and I think in the part of his decision he specifically mentions the testimony regarding <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe Behe's]]<br /> favorite example: the flagellum. He says it's irreducibly complex. And yet, scientists gave testimony that in the five years or six years since Behe first proposed that example, that more of the evolution of the flagellum, and I think also of the immune system, has been flushed out. His claim that's it's irreducibly complex has been proven false since he made those claims. New research has been done to show that.<br /> <br /> B: And he knows that, come on!<br /> <br /> S: He does.<br /> <br /> B: You know he knows that.<br /> <br /> S: Which pegs him as being disingenuous, and again the judge was very scathing about the ID proponents basically saying that they were not sincere in their position.<br /> <br /> P: To say the least, that's what he said, yes.<br /> <br /> B: Right. I've got some other interesting pullouts here that I've gleaned.<br /> <br /> S: Well, before you move on, I want to just comment on some of things you just brought up, some of the points. For example, the supernatural aspect of intelligent design, and the judge spent a lot of time writing about that, and that's critical also, because as we said before, the intelligent design proponents are not simply presenting intelligent design as science. They are trying to redefine science to include supernatural explanations, and the judge spent a lot of time addressing that specific point. First of all, he pointed out that every single ID defendant in the case admitted that there is no intelligent design without a supernaturalism. Therefore, it does not meet the conventional definition of science. They admitted it! Then he explained very carefully why supernaturalism equals religion. And why it is not admissible in the halls of science. The two are incompatible. So he very specifically made that decision. Again, this is absolutely critical to this whole debate. Again, as we discussed before, you can't change the rules of science. They are the way they are by necessity.<br /> <br /> B: That was the most egregious thing.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: The fact that they were even attempting to redefine science. Steve, there's another thing. The judge asked a lot of the Board members, he asked them about intelligent design, and almost all of them didn't even really know any details, they couldn't even describe it to the judge, and he was so taken aback by that. The best that one member said to him was that its &quot;things are designed intelligently.&quot; These are people ...<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: It's intelligent design<br /> <br /> B: Talk about sheep! I mean, do this and say this. OK. My, God!. They didn't even bother, even months later, bother to study up on intelligent design so they can talk intelligently about it in court!<br /> <br /> S: They didn't even do their homework before court.<br /> <br /> E: They apparently totally underestimated the judge.<br /> <br /> B: Or over estimated their counsel.<br /> <br /> S: So I imagine there has been an interesting response from the ID proponents after such a scathing and devastating decision against them.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I've been looking for some response. There's been some, and I assume in the future it will start coming out as to what they want to do. A couple of things I got here is: one of the guys at the [[wikipedia:Discovery_Institute|Discovery Institute]], [[wikipedia:John_G._West|John West]], a senior fellow, says that &quot;Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution. He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur.&quot; Now obviously, he didn't read the judge's paper. He made a point of saying &quot;I am not an activist judge, and this is not an activist bench.&quot; Look at the past decisions he's made, and that's just not what he is.<br /> <br /> S: He's a conservative judge who's actually a G. W. Bush appointee, by the way, who's religious. The judge is.<br /> <br /> B: Really? I did not know that.<br /> <br /> S: He says he's not an activist judge. The school board that tried to impose the religious views on a public school system, they were being activist, and they overstepped their bounds, and they did not serve the public well. He's absolutely right. Of course the Discovery Institute and the ID proponents are going to be crying like babies about this decision, but they have nothing to say. He's trying to redefine science. Hello! They're the ones who are trying to redefine science. He had centuries of precedence to establish the separation of supernaturalism from natural causes in science. Centuries of precedence, basically since the dawn of science. That is the division between science and religion.<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So it just tells you how vacuous and just intellectually dishonest their position is.<br /> <br /> B: It is. And here's another one. Richard Thompson, the lawyer for the Dover Area School, said that &quot;this judge should not place himself in a position of determining which scientific theory is valid and which is not.&quot; That's the first part of his quote, which is so ridiculous because that statement assumes that you've got two scientific theories, when, sorry, one of them is not a scientific theory.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The premise is wrong ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. The premise is wrong.<br /> <br /> S: ... and the conclusion is wrong. The other premise there is that judges don't decide the validity of science in the courtroom? Of course they do. They do that every day. They hear expert testimony, and they decide which scientific testimony is legitimate. The judge painstakingly went through all of the testimony on both sides, and showed on every single point the plaintiffs expert witnesses, the defenders of evolution and science, absolutely crushed the ID proponents, who just committed logical fallacy after logical fallacy.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> S: The fact is, when you're in a court of law, when there are rules of evidence and logic, and you are dealing with people who are experts in logic &amp;ndash; lawyers are, if nothing else, experts in logic. That is their skill. That is what they do. You can't get away with anything, and the judge saw through every single one of their misdirections, every single one of their illogical statements. And that's it. They were called on it. And this is what happened ...<br /> <br /> B: Time and again ...<br /> <br /> S: ... in every single creationism case that has gotten to the high courts, is that under the rules of evidence of a courtroom, the creationist argument falls like the tissue paper that it's made of.<br /> <br /> B: Here's another one from Richard Thompson, the lawyer. He said &quot;It should be left up to the debate that the scientific community was involved with.&quot; He's leaving it to the scientific community? Hello! I think they already made their decision. There is no debate within the scientific community.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The scientific community is united in their position that ID is not science. They're also trying desperately to portray this as a debate between two different scientific ideas. Again, the premise is wrong. ID is not science. Again, and the judge very clearly explained exactly why that is. It fails the test for science in multiple ways. One, it allows supernatural explanations. Two, it's not testable, and he asked that question of Behe and the others who were ID experts in the case: &quot;Tell me a way in which intelligent design can be subjected to a scientific test.&quot; Everything that they proposed, he said was actually just a really a test of evolution, not a test of ID. And again they were falling back on this false dualism, saying that if it's not evolution then ID, which is the false dichotomy logical fallacy, and therefore they were misinterpreting or misrepresenting scientific tests of evolution as if they were tests of intelligent design. In fact, there are no possible tests of intelligent design, because it's not a scientific theory. Interestingly, as we're wrapping up this topic, two days ago, so the day before the Dover decision, there was an article, an editorial published by one-time Presidential candidate and political commentator [[wikipedia:Pat_Buchanan|Pat Buchanan]]. Now, Buchanan has a reputation for being a bit of a political maverick, but here the name of his article was &quot;Darwinism On Defense,&quot; and it's basically an attack of evolution. <br /> <br /> P: Good timing with this article.<br /> <br /> S: It was good timing, right, but interestingly Buchanan who is otherwise, even if you disagree with his politics, he is on the fringe on a lot of issues. Even if you disagree with him, he usually is pretty careful about how he formulates his arguments and tries to avoid overt factual misstatements. But now he's stepping into the arena of evolution-creation debate, and he dredges up arguments that have been destroyed thirty, forty years ago. He clearly knows nothing about this topic. Let me give you a couple of examples that I thought were so egregious, really do him a great disservice. He basically reiterates the old argument that survival of the fittest is a [[wikipedia:Tautology_(rhetoric)|tautology]], because those who survive are defined as those who are the fittest, and those are the fittest are defined as those who survive, which is absurd. Those who are fittest are the ones who can run the fastest, reproduce the best, who have those list of traits which enable them to survive and reproduce. That's what makes them the fittest, and that's what's enables them to survive. So it's not a tautology. That's really a silly argument that has been destroyed decades ago, and he's drudging it up as if it is some kind of a new concept.<br /> <br /> B: And here's another one. He asks here or he states here &quot;And there are gaps in human evolution. Where are the missing links between lower and higher forms?&quot; Come on! Where's he getting his playbook? From thirty year-old creationist texts?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred years.<br /> <br /> S: He must be. There are no transitional forms? Please! How about there are transitional forms between whales and terrestrial mammals: [[wikipedia:Ambulocetus|ambulocetus]]. Where was he when that was discovered? How about: there are now dozens of feathered dinosaurs that are clearly occupying a morphological zone between dinosaurs and modern birds. He says &quot;there's no missing link between apes and man.&quot; Come on, how about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus australopithecus]? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis homo habilis]? [[wikipedia:Homo_erectus|homo erectus]]?There's basically a nice sequence of transitional forms. Again, it's not strictly linear. Evolution tends to branch out; it's bushy as Steven J. Gould used to say.<br /> <br /> B: Definitely not a (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> S: Still, it represents an evolutionary of nice, intricate vast evolutionary connection between modern man, homo sapiens, and our ape relatives. It's there! I mean, go to a museum! <br /> <br /> P: Steve, it's interesting that you point out at the beginning of this segment that Pat Buchanan normally, regardless of what you think of his politics, is normally a careful thinker and constructs his arguments with thought. But when you get into these subjects, he obviously invested. He's emotional about it.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: And his &amp;ndash; really his critical truths fall by the wayside. It's obvious by what he wrote.<br /> <br /> S: Right. He basically did a hack job in that article, which is different than his usual writing.<br /> <br /> P: Right. Because he let his emotions get away with him. He needs this to be true.<br /> <br /> S: Well lets all savor this moment. This was a stunning, definitive victory ...<br /> <br /> E: It's a Christmas miracle.<br /> <br /> S: ... for evolution and for science and for our society. Really put the intelligent design on the ropes.<br /> <br /> B: True, but I want to see this in the Supreme Court.<br /> <br /> S: That would be nice, but this is still a federal district court.<br /> <br /> B: It is. Great, but man, I want the highest court.<br /> <br /> S: This is still precedence. It may not be definitive law nationally like a Supreme Court decision would, but it is still a very powerful precedence.<br /> <br /> P: It is a very powerful precedent, and he went above and beyond.<br /> <br /> S: He did.<br /> <br /> P: He was merciless on the ID side.<br /> <br /> B: It was a great way to end 2005, I think.<br /> <br /> S: Kudos to Judge John Jones.<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Judge.<br /> <br /> P: Hear, hear.<br /> <br /> == Interview with Jan Helen McGee, Psychic Detective ==<br /> <br /> === Interview &lt;small&gt;(20:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: And so joining us now is [http://www.janhelenmcgee.com Jan Helen McGee]&lt;ref&gt;[[http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=172.0 Follow up forum comments on Jan Helen McGee]]&lt;/ref&gt;. Jan Helen, as she tells us she likes to be called, was involved recently in a murder investigation. She is a physic detective who investigated the case of the murder of Mark Arnold. The murder occurred in 1993. She assisted Detective Paul Zechman in the case, and according to newspaper reports, etc., provided the probable location of the murderer, who was then found. The murderer was Robert Wise. So, Helen, Jan Helen, I'm sorry, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> JM: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you for joining us and agreeing to be confronted by four skeptics.<br /> <br /> JM: Ha, ha. You're pretty good with the Helen part, too, because Helen, my middle name, is the name that I've always used when I work on these cases. It's only recently that I've decided to talk about my involvement. It's always been a secret. The only police officer or detective that knew my real name was my direct link. The rest of the detectives that were working on the case only knew me as &quot;Helen&quot;.<br /> <br /> S: I see. Why don't you tell us about this case? Just start from the beginning and tell us how you got involved.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I had worked very peripherally on a case prior to this with some detectives in my town, [[wikipedia:Lebanon,_Pennsylvania|Lebanon, Pennsylvania]], another murderer in [[wikipedia:Palmyra,_Pennsylvania|Palmyra]]? This was the first big case I worked on. What happened was I had a dream. Frankly, my whole life I've had murder dreams. I didn't connect them with actual murders until it became quite clear in 1993. That night, before I started working on the case, I had a really scary dream, and I woke up my then husband and told him about the dream. Frankly, he woke up because I gasped from the fear that I had about the dream because I saw the actual murder. I told him the whole story of the dream and the murder, went back to sleep, and then in the morning I had this strong desire to go get a newspaper, which is something I never did &amp;ndash; drive to go get a paper. So I did, and when I picked up the paper, there on the front page was a picture of the building, and it was just a one-room shack-type building, and it was exactly like in my dream. I brought it home, and everything in the article was exactly as I had described it in the dream, and my husband at the time just kept pushing me. He said &quot;You just have to call the police&quot;. You can't, you don't have another choice.&quot; So I made a call to the local county detectives, and told him the things from the dream and then some other information. Then I went on my computer and typed up some added information, some thoughts that I had, and sent those to him.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: After that, I went in to his office and talked to him. Then, we sort of both decided I would go to the site, to the murder site, and see if I had any more insights. So then one Saturday morning, I went in to &amp;ndash; met them at the municipal building, and the chief county detective, Paul Zechman, took me in to a room that was just filled with detectives, maybe between five and eight of them, because what they were doing that day was they had decided to close down the site. The site had been open for several weeks, since this was a few weeks after the murder that this happened. And they were doing their very last collection. Somebody was coming down from Harrisburg to do some blood collection, and they were forensic people. This was like the last of the forensic, the last time to go on the site before they released it back to the owner. I got in there into that room, and there were all these detectives, and they were very, very unhappy because they had to work early, it was like 7:30 on a Saturday morning. They also weren't very happy to see me.<br /> <br /> S: Do they get many murders in that town, or was this maybe a first for them?<br /> <br /> JM: No, there's murder's in this town. I think it's a town of thirty thousand, so there's a murder every year. It doesn't have a high crime rate, but it doesn't have a real low crime rate. The city itself, even though I live in the county, the city itself has some trouble. So they weren't totally new to it. But I would say it's a pretty safe town, relatively safe, small town outside of Harrisburg. I was in that room, and Paul Zechman said &quot;OK, Helen, tell everybody what you told me.&quot; And then he left me in that room. I just sat down and I proceeded to tell the other detectives what I felt I knew about the case. One of the things that I was obsessed with that really had no meaning on the case, necessarily, but seemed very, very important to me, and it was a pathway, I think, so I guess in retrospect it's a little bit important, because it led me down a path. But one thing I saw in this one-room building was that the victim had over twenty-five black, rotary phones.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Those phones from the forties. And I just couldn't believe it, and I just kept talking about these phones. Finally I realized that only one of the phones was hooked up, and that he talked constantly, sat at his desk, and he talked constantly on the phone. And then I sort of got to the point where I felt that he was talking to his best friend on the phone. And then that's how I reached the conclusion that his best friend had killed him.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. What was the significant of the black rotary phone in the actual case?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, there really wasn't any. After I told the detectives in the room the things I knew, then we all packed up went out to the site, and it was snowing. There was some snow on the ground, and everybody was sort of milling around, and I was just walking around. One of the other detectives insisted that I look inside this building, and I really didn't want to, because, as it just sounds so bizarre, but when I saw the murder, and this isn't just in my dream, because I remember very little of my dreams. But when I see these murders, I sometimes switch from the victim to the killer, and then sometimes I sort of float. When I saw this all happening, I was sort of &amp;ndash; this just sounds so bizarre &amp;ndash; I was sort of floating above the floor as I watched it, and it's very &amp;ndash; it makes me feel physically ill when I go through these scenes and work on these cases. So I really didn't want to revisit that part. I felt I had told enough of it, but this one detective just insisted I look in there. Before I looked in, another thing that I knew about was that these two men had shared a meal together before the one killed the other. So when he opened the door and I looked inside the one-room building, I was quite shocked myself, because I didn't know that I was really &amp;ndash; I didn't have a clue that I was good at this. I just was driven to share my information. And when I looked in there, there were over twenty-five &amp;ndash; I've never seen so many black rotary phones. They were everywhere. They were on the chair. This was sort of a messy place. They were on the chair. They were on the counter. They were on the bookshelf. They were on every available surface &amp;ndash; had a black rotary phone. And then to the left was the desk that I had envisioned and the phone that was actually working. And then it was really creepy for me, because I looked over to the stove &amp;ndash; there was a stove in there &amp;ndash; and on the stove was a big pan with congealed meat.<br /> <br /> S: You mentioned that you don't remember what you dreamed but you re-live the murder in a vision. So this a waking vision that you get?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. The best way I can describe it to people, because a lot of people always want to know how do I see things. To me it's like a memory. Say for example you're in a grocery store, and you see someone, and they ring a bell. You say &quot;I think I know that person, but I don't know how or who they are.&quot; Then you walk, maybe around to the next aisle, and all of a sudden, you start realizing that that person went to school with you. And then you go down another pathway of memory that says &quot;Oh, that's right. It was middle school.&quot; And the next path might be &quot;Oh, it was Mrs. Jackson's room.&quot; And then suddenly you realize that it was art class, you can see, even though it might be twenty, thirty years ago, the memory just comes at you like it was yesterday. You can smell the room. You can see who's sitting next to you. You can remember the nervous habits of Mrs. Jackson, and then just the whole room opens up.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: To me, it's just like a memory. I go back a pathway, sometimes. I mean, sometimes things come very clearly. This case, even though I was obsessed with the fact that after this man killed his friend, he went outside and smoked a cigarette, tried to figure out what he was going to do, and then decided to steal his friend's identity, because he wanted to be his friend. But then I remembered that I was standing &amp;ndash; they were ready to close the site, and I was just standing there with Paul Zechman, and suddenly he said &quot;Where did he go?&quot; And that's when I told him he went to the beach. To me, it's not only my visions, if you want to call them, but also other's people's interpretations of what I say. Because I really think that in any kind of murder case, there are teams, and I feel like I was an important part of this team, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... but just a part of the team nonetheless. Just one puzzle piece. A puzzle can't be put together without lots of pieces, and I was one puzzle piece. If he hadn't asked me where he went, I might not even have mentioned that.<br /> <br /> S: But until he asked that question, had you had any visions about where he went after the murder?<br /> <br /> JM: No, because I was so upset that he killed his best friend, and then it's just not very pleasant, but I become the murderer.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I see their reasoning, and I find them very &amp;ndash; I sort of get on their side, as awful as it sounds, and the killer wanted to be the victim. As messed up as that sounds ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... he wanted to be his best friend. He adored his family. He was divorced, but his ex-wife, the victim's ex-wife was very, very solicitous towards him, took care of him, checked in on him, he had a lovely son. The killer wanted his son. He wanted his family. He wanted his life. He ended up stealing his car. I found out later he stole his car, his stole his wallet, he stole his whole identity. I was obsessed with them being best friends. I could hardly get past the fact that you would have a lovely meal with your best friend, and then he would just kill you. Without Paul's question, I don't know if I ever would have gone there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But when he asked the question, did you have a vision at that moment, or the information was with you already?<br /> <br /> JM: It just came right out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I hadn't even thought about it. It just came right out of my mouth. I said &quot;He's at the beach.&quot; And then I just thought it was so bizarre, because there was snow all over the ground. Who would go to the beach in the snow? And then I could see that he had gone to the beach when he was a child, and this was a safe place for him. So I told Paul that I didn't think he was at the Jersey beach. Now here in this town, when people vacation, they always go to the New Jersey beach.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: So that would be the first thought. He's definitely not at the New Jersey beach, but I thought it was either [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehoboth_Beach,_Delaware Rehovoth Beach, Delaware] or Ocean City, Maryland. And then I was suddenly &amp;ndash; it was just like I realized he was definitely there.<br /> <br /> S: At one of those two places.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Now I said &quot;Are they close?&quot; And Paul said they were sort of close. Because when I do this work I become very right-brained, and I have to sort of float. It's like &amp;ndash; I'm a musician, I'm a music teacher, and when I play music, and really want to interpret it properly, I have to get into my right-brained activity, and I have to act sort of floaty. And that's the same thing that I have to do here. Any left-brain activity sort of leads me. There's lot's of things I don't quite get when I'm working on cases.<br /> <br /> S: I see, so you're not good with directions when you're in this state.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I don't even like driving. I don't like being in charge of anything. I just like to sort of just let myself go, like you do when you're falling asleep. Sort of.<br /> <br /> S: Now is this something you've always been able to do, say when you were a little girl?<br /> <br /> JM: Sure. The first memory I have is I lived in a row house up until I was two, so this was before I was two years old. I remember waking up in my crib and standing up and feeling the urge to cry for my mother, but then I remember being able to see through the walls and see through the floor and see where she was in the house, so that I didn't have to cry because I knew that she was in the house with me and I didn't have to be afraid and that she would come. Then the next memory that I have is I must have been about kindergarten age, because I remember the sequence was that I asked my mother if I could go in the front yard alone. She'd let me in the back yard alone, but not in the front yard alone, because it was a busy street out front. And then I remember she finally decided that I was old enough. So maybe I was even six, but probably five, because I remember I walked to school alone in first grade when I was six, so I was probably kindergarten age. And she let me go in the front yard. And I used to go behind this big, big, fat tree that I could completely hide behind, and I would move around the tree and stare at the neighbors, and I remember that I could see through the tree and see through their walls and watch what they were doing. And we had ladies that were widows, and three of them were widows, and they really led a pretty boring life, so I didn't really like watching them.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: But right next door to us was a family that was totally out of control, and so mostly I would go in the front. In retrospect, it seems so odd, but I would stand there with my back to the tree, but I would look back through the tree and so that I could sort of lean against the tree, and my face didn't have to be against the tree and so I could look back through the tree and through the house, and the mother would always be screaming and she would throw herself on the stairs and cry and then the husband would come down the steps and he'd yell and then he'd slam the door and go out to his car and peel away down the alley.<br /> <br /> S: Did you have any other paranormal experiences as a child or older? Have you ever seen a ghost, for example?<br /> <br /> JM: (laughs) I don't really ... I ... I see dead people. I don't really like the term &quot;ghost&quot;, because it has such a bad connotation. I don't see lots of dead people. I don't really like to see dead people or to talk to dead people or have them talk to me, but I do. But not very often. And I think I always have known when there were ghosts in houses. I could pass houses when I was in the car and see which ones &amp;ndash; I remember seeing &quot;Oh, that one has a ghost.&quot; and &quot;That one's haunted.&quot; That's what I guess I could deem a friendly ghost, ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... and that's an unsettled ghost. I always consider them unsettled when they're not very happy.<br /> <br /> S: So do they ever talk to you?<br /> <br /> JM: Dead people?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. But not in the way that live people talk to me. I get these messages, and they're just &amp;ndash; it's information. The only way I can think to explain it is I really believe that it's the historical speaking in tongues ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... when I give information, because my brain doesn't feel like it's giving the information. I feel like it's coming through my body, like my body is like a radio or a conduit for the information. So it's not like I actually hear someone's voice that has died. I just get the information and then it comes out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: But I really don't like dealing with dead people. It's just something I can do like an artist.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Is it frightening or just unpleasant?<br /> <br /> JM: The murder cases are unpleasant, but I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for anybody else working on the case. Any of the police detectives or the forensic people or the coroner. I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for them. It's a very unpleasant job to have to do. Am I afraid? No, I'm never afraid. And I think that it makes me feel sick, but I don't think it makes feel any more sick than anybody else than an [[wikipedia:Emergency_medical_technician|EMT]] or anybody that has to deal with things like that.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: It's upsetting, but no more for me. I'm really not afraid of anything. I used to be afraid of the dreams, but what's so wonderful is that since that 1993 dream, I don't have murder dreams any more.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. That was the last one.<br /> <br /> JM: That was the last one, and I'd had them all my life, and so I think it's real important that I keep working on murder cases, because now my visions come during the day when I'm strong enough to deal with them, and I can have my nice peaceful sleep.<br /> <br /> B: What do you dream about now? Do you remember your dreams now?<br /> <br /> JM: Fun things. Vacations. Old boyfriends. Just normal things. Once in awhile I'll wake up with my jaw clenched and not quite know what it is. But it's usually just nothing, just nebulous dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Nothing that really means anything. Just worry dreams. I have a few of those dreams, like you are late for something. I constantly have this dream that I'm getting ready to go on vacation and I can't find the clothes to pack, and I'm going to miss the plane. Just those dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. Typical anxiety dreams.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Anxiety dreams. Right. But I don't have those murder any more. I'm so thrilled.<br /> <br /> S: So, again, we are talking to Jan Helen McGee. Evan, go ahead, you had a question for her?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah. Jan Helen, you mentioned other or at least alluded that you've worked on some other murder cases. How many have you worked on?<br /> <br /> JM: Well it's really hard to say, because until just recently I would just work on them and really not pay too much attention. I would say probably as much &amp;ndash; I work on them until I run out of energy. So maybe three to six murder cases a year since '93.<br /> <br /> E: Three to six.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Since 1993.<br /> <br /> E: What sort of successes have you experienced with those cases?<br /> <br /> JM: Frankly, I'm not sure, because what happens is I work on the case, and I tell all the information, and then I just walk out of the room and don't ever contact the police again, and I don't even care or find out. The only reason I found out about this case was because Paul Zechman was on a show called ''[[wikipedia:The_FBI_Files|The FBI Files]]'' on the Palmyra murder from this murder I had worked on previously. And after he finished filming that for New Dominion Pictures, they asked him if he knew of any psychics, and he told them about me, but said that I'm very private, and that he would call me, and when he did, I said &quot;Paul, of course not.&quot; I've kept this a secret. I don't want to talk to anybody, especially not television. And then there was silence and &quot;Oh, you want me to do this, right?&quot; And he said &quot;I think you should,&quot; because he knew that what my goal, one of my goals is to teach law enforcement to use their psychic ability. How to &amp;ndash; there's physical manifestations that we all have, that all psychics have, and I think that they can be pin-pointed, that they can pin-point psychics within law enforcement. So he said this will get you what you want.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: That's the only reason I know about this case.<br /> <br /> E: Sure. I'm just curious if you're curious at all about what could be deemed your rate of success as far as your psychics visions go and to how they actually turn out. Would you venture a guess maybe in a percentage of how often they are accurate?<br /> <br /> JM: I'd say a hundred. That doesn't mean that I solve every single case.<br /> <br /> E: No.<br /> <br /> JM: One time I worked on a robbery. I seldom work on robberies, but I remember early on, it was probably 1994 I worked on a robbery, and I called a cold call to a cop.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And he just flat out told me this was ridiculous. And I told him I don't know how it can harm you to write down what I say so I can get this out of my brain. So he did, and a year later he called me back, apologetic, and telling me every single thing I said was true, and he's so sorry, and he doesn't know why he acted like such a jerk. Other police, there's been cases that I've worked on that I know aren't solved, but part of it I think is that they didn't follow my advice. Paul Zechman trusted me and he did what I told him to do, and so if I give my information and the police do not do what I suggest, then it's not going to get solved. So as far as I'm concerned, I think my information is a hundred per cent. It's one of the few times in life I'm right.<br /> <br /> S: Can you turn your attention to a case and come up with information, or can you choose the cases, in other words, or do they choose you?<br /> <br /> JM: A little bit of both. Most of the time, I'll pick up the newspaper or I'll see something on the television, and then I'll say &quot;Oh, now. No, no. That's not the way it went.&quot; Or I'll know something, and then I'll just call. Sometimes, I've been called by police all over the state, and even out of state, for help, and then I can just work on that case. Occasionally, I don't know anything at all, but mostly I have something to go on.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think of other psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: I think most psychics are scam psychics.<br /> <br /> S: Most of them are not genuine.<br /> <br /> B: How do they work? How does their scams work?<br /> <br /> JM: You know, I think it's just like any other scam. Are you men scientists?<br /> <br /> S: Some of us.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Some by trade. Other by interest.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. By trade or interest. Right. So you have scientific thinking. So you know scam scientists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: They're scams in every walk of life, and they all work the same. They're very smart in that area, and they use tricks, and they BS.<br /> <br /> B: It's intentional. Sometimes it can be intentional, other times it can be more of a self-delusion, thinking they might think that they're not &amp;ndash; they might not be intentionally scamming, but sometimes they do. You come across all different types.<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly, but I don't think it's any different from any other scam, whether it's a scam lawyer, or ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... somebody says they're an FBI man, and they're scamming some girl. No matter what it is, he uses the exact same trick.<br /> <br /> S: So how can we tell the difference between the scam psychic detectives and the genuine psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, I'm coming out with a book that's called ''Psychic Surge: Don't Get Scammed''. Frankly, the book is over a hundred pages of all the different ways you have to go about to not get scammed. I think that it's just the same as a doctor. You need to find references. In my case, no police detective has ever worked with me without calling my references.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I have a profiler, which &amp;ndash; a profiler &amp;ndash; there's only two profilers in the state of Pennsylvania that I know of. And one of them vouches for me. And then, Paul Zechman always vouches for me. But have a whole long list now, but before I alway used the two of them. One thing is to find references. I think that you have to your instinct and your intellect if you are using a psychic because if you're like I was at the Hershey Hotel and sat down next to a psychic and she told me &amp;ndash; everything she told me was wrong, and it was clearly wrong. So I knew right away that she wasn't accurate. If she said six things, none of which are accurate, then I can see right there. I think you just can't let yourself get hoodwinked.<br /> <br /> S: Well, we certainly agree with that.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. It's just like any other scam person. You take their information, you check out their credentials, and use everything you can ... <br /> <br /> S: What would a credential be? In this field, there aren't really any credentials, because there is no gold standard. That begs the question that of course we're interested in as scientists and skeptics is how do we know if this phenomenon is even genuine at all from a scientific point of view, not necessarily from a personal point of view, but in the abstract.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I think most psychics are scam psychics, and as far as proof, do you love someone? Do you love someone?<br /> <br /> S: Of course I do.<br /> <br /> JM: But can you prove it?<br /> <br /> S: Well, that is not a scientific claim. If you make a claim about the facts of nature, that requires science. Making a claim about a subjective feeling is just completely different, so you really can't compare the two.<br /> <br /> JM: Well, this is a subjective feeling. If that's what you want to be ...<br /> <br /> S: But you have tangible &amp;ndash; but you are claiming tangible results, though, right?<br /> <br /> JM: But there are tangible results to love.<br /> <br /> S: The two types of claims are not comparable in terms of that analogy that you're trying to draw. Either a phenomenon is real or it isn't real. And if it's real, then there needs to be manifestations that can be objectively determined. Are you making the argument that there's no way science can ever validate your abilities?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: And why is that? Why would it be impossible to validate your abilities if they're real?<br /> <br /> JM: I think you could validate my results, like you validate the results of love.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Love makes you feel wonderful, love makes you kinder, more caring, and so you can go to Paul Zechman, a man who is the chief county detective in this town, a man who stakes his reputation on his good work, a man that you will see on the television show is a conservative, careful, slow-moving man, and he will tell you that I found his &amp;ndash; I enabled him to find his murderer.<br /> <br /> S: And we of course we accept that fact that he probably believes that, and again you knew coming in that we were skeptics and that ...<br /> <br /> JM: Oh, I don't mind.<br /> <br /> S: What are interpretation of all of this is a little bit different. We don't necessarily question people's motives or beliefs, because we can't read people's minds, so we don't know what people really think or believe. Our interest is on the tangible, verifiable results. We do know and just from experience with many, many different paranormal phenomenon that the capacity for people to be fooled by themselves, by events, is enormous, and the purpose of science is to essentially control for the really vast human tendency to deceive ourselves. Let me ask you a question. If we wanted to subject to some very basic common-sense controls to see if we could validate the results of your investigations, would you be willing to do that?<br /> <br /> JM: If I felt that &amp;ndash; I would be willing to do anything that was moving forward for good.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: I absolutely refuse to try to pick numbers or to try to make guesses, because my gift is not here to tell anybody something they already know.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: My gift is to find out what people don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Well let me give you an example. Because this is ...<br /> <br /> JM: Okay, and then I will tell you the way I think you should test me.<br /> <br /> S: Sure. Absolutely. When you get involved with a new case, really the only thing that we would need to do would be to record all of the information that you produced about the case before the investigation reaches it conclusion. And then in some sort of objective way compare what you predicted to what was actually discovered. That's all. It's very straight-forward.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, you can do national cases as far as I'm concerned. Every time there's a national case, you can call me and I can tell you if I know something and where we go, or you can just pick a case. You can find a case where you live. You don't have to tell me hardly anything. You can find an unsolved murder case and we can see if we can go down that avenue.<br /> <br /> S: That's great! I think that would be very instructive, and if your goal is to promote the use psychic detectives and to teach people how to use them correctly, this is the way to do it, in my opinion, because you could silence us, you could silence all the skeptics with verifiable data. That's really all we are asking for. In fact, we screen applicants for the Randi's Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. And we could do this as a screening test.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Because I really don't like the way he does things, because I just don't see how that's to humankind's good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, donate the money to charity. Do whatever you want with it. The point is it's a very public undeniable test.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. I don't have a problem with the money. I just don't want to do a test that is just not for the public good, because when I do any kind of work in this way, it takes a huge amount of energy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: And when I work on a murder case I often physically get ill.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: So, if I'm going to do this and takes this energy to try &amp;ndash; because I really don't have any interest in proving it to anyone.<br /> <br /> S: I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: It's just is. But I would be glad to work on more murder cases.<br /> <br /> S: That's great, but all we would ask is that you do what you're doing anyway. Do the cases that you're going to do anyway.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But we'll just verify them in a way that doesn't leave any room for guesswork. That we know that we can measure it in a scientific way the accuracy of the predictions that you make. <br /> <br /> JM: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We will allow you to set the parameters anyway you want to, as long as it allows for some objective observation and conclusions at the end.<br /> <br /> P: Jan Helen, you said you were going to give us a suggestion about how to test you. Out of curiosity, how would you test yourself?<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly like you said. I would like to work on murder cases, and you go ahead and find out how much of my information is accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's great! So we're in basic agreement. That's good.<br /> <br /> S: That's great. So we definitely would like to do that, because that I think it wasn't our purpose to debate with you here tonight. We really wanted to hear your experience and your side of the story.<br /> <br /> JM: Another thing that I can do is that if you physically put ten people in front of me I can probably tell what's physically wrong with all ten of them.<br /> <br /> S: You make like medical diagnoses?<br /> <br /> E: That's very testable.<br /> <br /> JM: I'm not a medicine person, but I can see what's wrong with them. What part of their body is weak ...<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> JM: ... has a weakness.<br /> <br /> JM: So you could ask all ten people what was wrong with them in advance, and you could see that.<br /> <br /> S: Give me an example of the kind of statement that you would make. You said what part of the body.<br /> <br /> JM: It usually just comes out with &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Okay, something like that &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> JM: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> S: Do you mention specific diseases like &quot;You have diabetes&quot;? That sort of thing.<br /> <br /> JM: No.<br /> <br /> S: No.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I'm not that accurate, because I'm not a medical person.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's just more basic symptoms.<br /> <br /> JM: No I can usually just see that bone, muscle, or blood, and if it's &amp;ndash; I can also see if it's inherited or if it was an injury.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, that's a lot more easy to test than going through an entire murder case and investigation and following it to its conclusion and then doing a comparison. I not saying we can't do that.<br /> <br /> S: Well, that would be another &amp;ndash; an easier test.<br /> <br /> E: Two different tests.<br /> <br /> S: But I think we should do both. They're different kinds of tests.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Right. And you know frankly, I just think I get a lot more power on the murder stuff, but I just know that's one other thing that I'm good at.<br /> <br /> E: Jan Helen, do you have to be in the room to see what's wrong with them, or do you it from afar, or you have to be in close proximity?<br /> <br /> JM: With the health problems, I usually like to be in a room with the person.<br /> <br /> E: In a room.<br /> <br /> JM: With the murder cases, I ... Murder cases I often start on the phone. But then when it starts to get upsetting, I usually like to be with a police officer, so I'm just wondering how that's going to go, but if we get to that point, there's no reason why you couldn't &amp;ndash; if there was a case, there's no reason why I couldn't also talk to the police officer and possibly they would let you be there, or have me continue with them. If it gets to that point, we'd want to continue and at least pass off my information to a detective.<br /> <br /> P: Is there an average amount of time, Jan Helen, that it takes to work on a murder case? Is it a number of hours, days?<br /> <br /> JM: Usually, I have three different meetings. The first meeting I make the cold call. Then I type things into my computer and send them. Then the next thing is usually the police have me come in, and I go through more information I might have. The detective might have maybe three questions. I usually tell them not to talk at all. I don't like them to talk about anything.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And, occasionally I have a question, like why couldn't the victim get out of the bed, and I remember that they said because the victim was in a wheel chair, so he couldn't run away from the problem. Then after that, then usually I go to the site, the murder site. So, that's about it, four ...<br /> <br /> P: I see. I see.<br /> <br /> JM: Four different times. And it can be maybe two to four hours when I meet them. Maybe two hours at the meeting, and a couple hours to go to the murder site and maybe drive by some other area where maybe something to do with the crime that the police officer wants to show me. The initial meeting on the phone, that's just pretty brief, and then I send out my information that I type up, and that's usually &amp;ndash; I usually write one to two full pages. And then, when I call again then we schedule a meeting. Because usually as a result of what I've written, I have so much accuracy that then they schedule a meeting with me. Stuff that nobody could know.<br /> <br /> P: Do you ever encounter police who are hostile to working with you?<br /> <br /> JM: Of course!<br /> <br /> P: Don't want to hear what you have to say, hang up, et cetera.<br /> <br /> JM: Almost all of them. Almost all of them don't want to hear what I have to say. Because there's a lot of scam psychics call them, and a lot of them have never worked with anybody like me before. But I have a Master of Arts degree, and I'm a music teacher, and I have a reputation to uphold, and I have really good references. So, pretty much a good detective, though, is always going to listen to anything someone tells them. They might not go on for the six to eight, maybe six to eight hours it takes to talk to me, but they're sure going to take the information. Briefly, at least.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: But then once I tell them things that nobody knows ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... then they all go further with me.<br /> <br /> S: Jan Helen, it was a pleasure to have you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thank you for sharing all of that with us. I look forward to working with you in the future. It sounds like we have an agreement that you will do a investigative murder case under our observation, so we can basically tally your accuracy. We'll be in touch off the air with the details, but that is excellent. I'm looking forward to doing that.<br /> <br /> JM: Try to pick the victim being a male instead female.<br /> <br /> S: Victim a male. Any details you want we will do. We always try to design these ...<br /> <br /> JM: I can do either.<br /> <br /> S: ... to accomodate the claimant as much as possible. <br /> <br /> JM: Disregard that. I'll do anybody.<br /> <br /> P: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: It's all right.<br /> <br /> S: But we want you to feel as comfortable as possible. Whatever details will make you ...<br /> <br /> JM: When I like when they're bad guys.<br /> <br /> S: Bad guys.<br /> <br /> JM: But you don't have to find bad guys killing bad guys. Whatever you want to do. I'll do any cases, because it's real important to me to help society as much as I possibly can.<br /> <br /> P: Excellent.<br /> <br /> S: Great! Well thanks again.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, thank you.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> JM: Bye.<br /> <br /> === Discussion &lt;small&gt;(1:01:30)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, that was our first interview with a non-skeptic. It was quite interesting. What did you guys think of Jan Helen?<br /> <br /> P: I thought she was very lively. I thought she was very interesting, and of course the thing I take away from this is her agreement to be tested ...<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: ... by the New England Skeptical Society.<br /> <br /> S: That's going to be the only way to get anything meaningful out of this in scientifically. I mean, her claims are so glowing. She thinks she has a hundred percent accuracy?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred percent accuracy. That's what she said.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. When you start saying your predictions, if they didn't come true they will in the future in some indefinite time, then you could easily believe that, &quot;hey, I'm hundred percent&quot;. I never make a mistake if you leave it wide open to the future.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But, Bob, remember she said in the interview when she deals with these murder cases, she's looking only into the past. So, it has happened. She claimed a hundred percent accuracy to that, with no pleading to any future predictions.<br /> <br /> S: You guys are both referring to comments she made to us ... <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... while we were recording. But when she makes predictions, sometimes they are predictions of the future, and that's why they may not be true at that moment, but when she does do her murder cases, she's always looking into the past. But we'll propose to her two tests, actually. The simple one will be for her to &amp;ndash; she can basically detect medical symptoms or ailments. She did it for us over the phone, in fact. That will be very easy to test. And then, the next time we have a viable murder case that's regionally convenient, geographically convenient, then we need to get her to list all of her predictions ahead of time before the details of the case are known, and then we'll compare that list to whatever details eventually come to light, point by point. She won't get to pick and choose or morph them to fit what ultimately happens or just remember the hits and forget the misses. It will be instructive. As usual, the most instructive thing will be how she responds after the test is completed. But we will see. We did get her to agree to a test. So, stay tuned for her episode.<br /> <br /> P: Not only did she agree, she seemed eager.<br /> <br /> S: She seemed eager. My impression is that she really believes in her abilities. I got a little bit of a sense of a phantasy-prone personality from some of the history that she gave. So I think she's probably sincere. I think just ...<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, (unintelligible) .<br /> <br /> S: It sounds like she does a little bit of a cold reading when she sits down with the detectives to glean some of the details of the case. She works with detectives who believe in her ability, so that makes cold reading real easy, when you're dealing with a subject who is pre-disposed to believing in your abilities. But, again, sitting here all we can do is speculate. We need to gather some first-hand information, and we'll do that. We tried to bait her with the million dollars, and she didn't seem too eager about that. That's actually a little bit of a red flag. I would think that if someone genuinely believed in their own powers, especially if they think they are a hundred percent, that they would be most eager to snatch up that million dollars.<br /> <br /> P: I have never heard anybody with a paranormal claim of any kind say anything good about Randi's challenge.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: Never! &quot;He doesn't do it right. He sets it up so you can't win&quot;. They hate it. They hate him, and they hate it.<br /> <br /> E: What they don't realize ...<br /> <br /> S: Because what he does is scientifically accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> B: It makes them look so bad. Think about it. That's such a huge thing that he's willing to give anyone a million dollars.<br /> <br /> E: Right. Folks, just so you know, what he wants you to do, in your application for the million-dollar challenge is state what you can do and with what percent &amp;ndash; what degree of success. And that's basically all the information he's looking for. And most of the applicants can not answer those questions.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: And they cannot put into a cohesive statement.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But we'll do that. I've made up several protocols now to screen applicants for that. It's a negotiation. It's a discussion back and forth to get them to coalesce their claims into something tangible and to come up with a way to score it and a threshold for what we would consider to be success. One guy &amp;ndash; it was interesting &amp;ndash; one guy wasn't sure why we weren't going to use a P-value of .05, which basically means a one-in-twenty chance of having a positive result by random chance alone. Well, you know, Randi can't give a million dollars to every twentieth person that he tests ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... the psychic challenge. But anyway, so we'll do that. And if she wants to, we could screen her for the Randi Challenge, and if she passes, we'll be happy to pass her along to Randi. But no one apparently has ever gotten through the screening phase of the challenge. So again, we'll definitely follow up on this in the future. We're also having discussions with the detective on this particular case. He may or may not come on the show on a future episode, but we'll at least talk to him about the case and see if we can get some further details. He was not available for tonight.<br /> <br /> S: Well guys, it was another fun episode. Thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Our pleasure as usual.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}} <br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |ESP = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_23&diff=9601 2015-01-25T06:52:38Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District Decision (0:23) */ Adding links, punctuation changes for clarity, spelling.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |links = y<br /> |Today I Learned list = y<br /> |segment redirects = y &lt;!-- redirect pages for segments with head-line type titles --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 23<br /> |episodeDate = 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; December 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = JM: {{w|Jan Helen McGee}}<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast12-21-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, December twenty-first, 2005. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me tonight are Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Perry DeAngelis ...<br /> <br /> P: Good evening.<br /> <br /> S: and Bob Novella.<br /> <br /> B: Hello.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> <br /> === Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District Decision &lt;small&gt;(0:23)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: The news today, the big news this week is victory in Dover.<br /> <br /> P: Yaaaayyyy!<br /> <br /> B: Whoo-hooo!<br /> <br /> S: Judge John Jones handed down a hundred and thirty-nine page <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District decision]],<br /> and this is the case &amp;ndash; the name of the case is ''Tammy Kitzmiller, et. al. vs. the Dover Area School District''.<br /> This was regarding the teaching of [[wikipedia:Intelligent_design|intelligent design]] we've been talking about over the last few months. This is the eagerly-awaited decision. I don't think there was really much doubt, at least not in my mind, that the judge was going to decide against the school district, basically ruling that teaching of intelligent design in the public schools is unconstitutional. The real question was how broad or narrow his decision was going to be. I've perused at lot of the 139-page decision, and I've got to tell you this judge did not leave a stone unturned. This was, I think, the broadest decision we could have hoped for. <br /> <br /> B: I wonder what kind of help he had. Going through a court case like that, I'm sure you end up well-versed in the topic, but I wonder what outside sources he approached in coming up with this. I mean, he didn't write this 139-page himself, did he? I'm sure he's got guys that ...<br /> <br /> P: Everyone's got clerks.<br /> <br /> B: ... sum up everything.<br /> <br /> S: He as staff. He had six weeks of testimony. <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: He had a lot of precedence, a lot of cases that he was summarizing. He actually took the time to go through the history of creationism in this country and the history of the legal cases. A lot of it was material he would have had available to him. And then the rest is commenting specifically on testimony that was given before him. <br /> <br /> P: Right. Which is what he should do. He should base his decision on the case presented to him.<br /> <br /> S: A few things that struck me, reading through it &amp;ndash; actually many things, but some things that I think are very significant. The judge, who again I think was trying to really establish an iron-clad decision here that cannot be circumvented. He commented specifically on the fact that ID (Intelligent Design) has historical connections to Creationism. And multiple times in the decision he wrote that a reasonable person assessing this, understanding the cultural and historical context – very, very specifically was putting intelligent design into its historical context – saying, again, tying it to its religious antecedents. There was some specific pieces of information he cited, for example, the ''Of Pandas and People''<br /> &lt;ref&gt;''Of Pandas and People'' &lt;/ref&gt;<br /> book that was specifically referred to in the Dover law, basically saying that you have to teach intelligent design in the public schools. There were multiple drafts of this book available, and one draft &amp;ndash; earlier drafts used the word ''creationism,'' I think a hundred and fifty times. And the final draft was essentially was a search-and-replace &amp;ndash; replaced the word ''creationism'' with the words ''intelligent design.''<br /> <br /> B: And not only that, the timing was significant. When it was changed.<br /> <br /> S: And that occurred right after the legal case that basically said that creationism could not be taught in public schools. So, they said &quot;OK, lets change the work 'creationism' for 'intelligent design' and try again.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, I'm not sure if you're aware the circumstances under which the book got into the school was very, very shady. It was kind of like laundered in a sense, in the description that I read, where somebody involved, he had somebody buy the book and give it to the schools or something. It was a little underhanded from what ...<br /> <br /> S: It was very contrived.<br /> <br /> B: ... I gathered Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So if you may recall, guys, when [SGU_Episode_15 Chris Mooney] was on the show, we were talking about this topic, because he had been covering from a journalistic point of view, covering the trial. He noted that one concern is that – where the creationists are going to go next? assuming they lose this fight, which they did. What's their next move?<br /> <br /> B: I didn't think of that, yet.<br /> <br /> S: His concern was that &quot;what if they just try to mandate a criticism of evolution?&quot; Teaching the gaps and the flaws in evolutionary theory.<br /> <br /> B: Go right ahead.<br /> <br /> S: But not promoting the teaching of intelligent design, or anything that could be overtly religious. The judge in this case, Judge Jones, actually already kind of addressed that issue, and he said that specifically mandating teaching about the gaps or flaws in evolution only serves a religious purpose. And, again, he made that historical connection to Creationism. It is a strategy employed by creationists, and that was enough to link it to Creationism. I was very heartened by that. He's basically saying that the creationists can't just keep morphing their strategy from A to B to C to D and think that they're starting with a clean slate each time. Basically, they're not fooling anyone. Whatever it morphs into next is still Creationism, because the law, the judge in this case, said it is perfectly legitimate legalistically to put whatever it morphs into into its historical context. So that's good. I mean it basically ...<br /> <br /> E: Very astute.<br /> <br /> S: However you try to play the game, we have your number, and it's not going to work.<br /> <br /> B: Excellent! I've got a little clip here from his argument, from his paper. The part of it that I really focused on and I was really interested in is the fact that it's just so not science, it's pathetic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: How hard can it really be to say &quot;Look, this is not science. Therefore, regardless of anything else, it doesn't belong in the classroom.&quot; And he's got three points here: ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> B: That's a bigee. That's kind of important right there. The second one is the argument of irreducible complexity, central to intelligent design, employs the same flawed and illogical, contrived, dualism that doomed Creation science in the eighties.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: This next one ties into what you recently said, Steve. &quot;Intelligent design's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.&quot; That's it. All this negative stuff you're saying about evolution: it's not one scientific theory against another. The scientific community unilaterally has said &quot;Wrong! This stuff is just not true.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: That's right, and I think in the part of his decision he specifically mentions the testimony regarding <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe Behe's]]<br /> favorite example: the flagellum. He says it's irreducibly complex. And yet, scientists gave testimony that in the five years or six years since Behe first proposed that example, that more of the evolution of the flagellum, and I think also of the immune system, has been flushed out. His claim that's it's irreducibly complex has been proven false since he made those claims. New research has been done to show that.<br /> <br /> B: And he knows that, come on!<br /> <br /> S: He does.<br /> <br /> B: You know he knows that.<br /> <br /> S: Which pegs him as being disingenuous, and again the judge was very scathing about the ID proponents basically saying that they were not sincere in their position.<br /> <br /> P: To say the least, that's what he said, yes.<br /> <br /> B: Right. I've got some other interesting pullouts here that I've gleaned.<br /> <br /> S: Well, before you move on, I want to just comment on some of things you just brought up, some of the points. For example, the supernatural aspect of intelligent design, and the judge spent a lot of time writing about that, and that's critical also, because as we said before, the intelligent design proponents are not simply presenting intelligent design as science. They are trying to redefine science to include supernatural explanations, and the judge spent a lot of time addressing that specific point. First of all, he pointed out that every single ID defendant in the case admitted that there is no intelligent design without a supernaturalism. Therefore, it does not meet the conventional definition of science. They admitted it! Then he explained very carefully why supernaturalism equals religion. And why it is not admissible in the halls of science. The two are incompatible. So he very specifically made that decision. Again, this is absolutely critical to this whole debate. Again, as we discussed before, you can't change the rules of science. They are the way they are by necessity.<br /> <br /> B: That was the most egregious thing.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: The fact that they were even attempting to redefine science. Steve, there's another thing. The judge asked a lot of the Board members, he asked them about intelligent design, and almost all of them didn't even really know any details, they couldn't even describe it to the judge, and he was so taken aback by that. The best that one member said to him was that its &quot;things are designed intelligently.&quot; These are people ...<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: It's intelligent design<br /> <br /> B: Talk about sheep! I mean, do this and say this. OK. My, God!. They didn't even bother, even months later, bother to study up on intelligent design so they can talk intelligently about it in court!<br /> <br /> S: They didn't even do their homework before court.<br /> <br /> E: They apparently totally underestimated the judge.<br /> <br /> B: Or over estimated their counsel.<br /> <br /> S: So I imagine there has been an interesting response from the ID proponents after such a scathing and devastating decision against them.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, I've been looking for some response. There's been some, and I assume in the future it will start coming out as to what they want to do. A couple of things I got here is: one of the guys at the [[wikipedia:Discovery_Institute|Discovery Institute]], [[wikipedia:John_G._West|John West]], a senior fellow, says that &quot;Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution. He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur.&quot; Now obviously, he didn't read the judge's paper. He made a point of saying &quot;I am not an activist judge, and this is not an activist bench.&quot; Look at the past decisions he's made, and that's just not what he is.<br /> <br /> S: He's a conservative judge who's actually a G. W. Bush appointee, by the way, who's religious. The judge is.<br /> <br /> B: Really? I did not know that.<br /> <br /> S: He says he's not an activist judge. The school board that tried to impose the religious views on a public school system, they were being activist, and they overstepped their bounds, and they did not serve the public well. He's absolutely right. Of course the Discovery Institute and the ID proponents are going to be crying like babies about this decision, but they have nothing to say. He's trying to redefine science. Hello! They're the ones who are trying to redefine science. He had centuries of precedence to establish the separation of supernaturalism from natural causes in science. Centuries of precedence, basically since the dawn of science. That is the division between science and religion.<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So it just tells you how vacuous and just intellectually dishonest their position is.<br /> <br /> B: It is. And here's another one. Richard Thompson, the lawyer for the Dover Area School, said that &quot;this judge should not place himself in a position of determining which scientific theory is valid and which is not.&quot; That's the first part of his quote, which is so ridiculous because that statement assumes that you've got two scientific theories, when, sorry, one of them is not a scientific theory.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The premise is wrong ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. The premise is wrong.<br /> <br /> S: ... and the conclusion is wrong. The other premise there is that judges don't decide the validity of science in the courtroom? Of course they do. They do that every day. They hear expert testimony, and they decide which scientific testimony is legitimate. The judge painstakingly went through all of the testimony on both sides, and showed on every single point the plaintiffs expert witnesses, the defenders of evolution and science, absolutely crushed the ID proponents, who just committed logical fallacy after logical fallacy.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> S: The fact is, when you're in a court of law, when there are rules of evidence and logic, and you are dealing with people who are experts in logic &amp;ndash; lawyers are, if nothing else, experts in logic. That is their skill. That is what they do. You can't get away with anything, and the judge saw through every single one of their misdirections, every single one of their illogical statements. And that's it. They were called on it. And this is what happened ...<br /> <br /> B: Time and again ...<br /> <br /> S: ... in every single creationism case that has gotten to the high courts, is that under the rules of evidence of a courtroom, the creationist argument falls like the tissue paper that it's made of.<br /> <br /> B: Here's another one from Richard Thompson, the lawyer. He said &quot;It should be left up to the debate that the scientific community was involved with.&quot; He's leaving it to the scientific community? Hello! I think they already made their decision. There is no debate within the scientific community.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The scientific community is united in their position that ID is not science. They're also trying desperately to portray this as a debate between two different scientific ideas. Again, the premise is wrong. ID is not science. Again, and the judge very clearly explained exactly why that is. It fails the test for science in multiple ways. One, it allows supernatural explanations. Two, it's not testable, and he asked that question of Behe and the others who were ID experts in the case: &quot;Tell me a way in which intelligent design can be subjected to a scientific test.&quot; Everything that they proposed, he said was actually just a really a test of evolution, not a test of ID. And again they were falling back on this false dualism, saying that if it's not evolution then ID, which is the false dichotomy logical fallacy, and therefore they were misinterpreting or misrepresenting scientific tests of evolution as if they were tests of intelligent design. In fact, there are no possible tests of intelligent design, because it's not a scientific theory. Interestingly, as we're wrapping up this topic, two days ago, so the day before the Dover decision, there was an article, an editorial published by one-time Presidential candidate and political commentator [[wikipedia:Pat_Buchanan|Pat Buchanan]]. Now, Buchanan has a reputation for being a bit of a political maverick, but here the name of his article was &quot;Darwinism On Defense,&quot; and it's basically an attack of evolution. <br /> <br /> P: Good timing with this article.<br /> <br /> S: It was good timing, right, but interestingly Buchanan who is otherwise, even if you disagree with his politics, he is on the fringe on a lot of issues. Even if you disagree with him, he usually is pretty careful about how he formulates his arguments and tries to avoid overt factual misstatements. But now he's stepping into the arena of evolution-creation debate, and he dredges up arguments that have been destroyed thirty, forty years ago. He clearly knows nothing about this topic. Let me give you a couple of examples that I thought were so egregious, really do him a great disservice. He basically reiterates the old argument that survival of the fittest is a [[wikipedia:Tautology_(rhetoric)|tautology]], because those who survive are defined as those who are the fittest, and those are the fittest are defined as those who survive, which is absurd. Those who are fittest are the ones who can run the fastest, reproduce the best, who have those list of traits which enable them to survive and reproduce. That's what makes them the fittest, and that's what's enables them to survive. So it's not a tautology. That's really a silly argument that has been destroyed decades ago, and he's drudging it up as if it is some kind of a new concept.<br /> <br /> B: And here's another one. He asks here or he states here &quot;And there are gaps in human evolution. Where are the missing links between lower and higher forms?&quot; Come on! Where's he getting his playbook? From thirty year-old creationist texts?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred years.<br /> <br /> S: He must be. There are no transitional forms? Please! How about there are transitional forms between whales and terrestrial mammals: <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulocetus Ambulocetus]]. Where was he when that was discovered? How about: there are now dozens of feathered dinosaurs that are clearly occupying a morphological zone between dinosaurs and modern birds. He says &quot;there's no missing link between apes and man.&quot; Come on, how about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus australopithecus]]? <br /> [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis Homo habilus]]?<br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus Home erectus]]? <br /> There's basically a nice sequence of transitional forms. Again, it's not strictly linear. Evolution tends to branch out; it's bushy as Steven J. Gould used to say.<br /> <br /> B: Definitely not a (unintelligible) <br /> <br /> S: Still, it represents an evolutionary of nice, intricate vast evolutionary connection between modern man, homo sapiens, and our ape relatives. It's there! I mean, go to a museum! <br /> <br /> P: Steve, it's interesting that you point out at the beginning of this segment that Pat Buchanan normally, regardless of what you think of his politics, is normally a careful thinker and constructs his arguments with thought. But when you get into these subjects, he obviously invested. He's emotional about it.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> P: And his &amp;ndash; really his critical truths fall by the wayside. It's obvious by what he wrote.<br /> <br /> S: Right. He basically did a hack job in that article, which is different than his usual writing.<br /> <br /> P: Right. Because he let his emotions get away with him. He needs this to be true.<br /> <br /> S: Well lets all savor this moment. This was a stunning, definitive victory ...<br /> <br /> E: It's a Christmas miracle.<br /> <br /> S: ... for evolution and for science and for our society. Really put the intelligent design on the ropes.<br /> <br /> B: True, but I want to see this in the Supreme Court.<br /> <br /> S: That would be nice, but this is still a federal district court.<br /> <br /> B: It is. Great, but man, I want the highest court.<br /> <br /> S: This is still precedence. It may not be definitive law nationally like a Supreme Court decision would, but it is still a very powerful precedence.<br /> <br /> P: It is a very powerful precedence, and he went above and beyond.<br /> <br /> S: He did.<br /> <br /> P: He was merciless on the ID side.<br /> <br /> B: It was a great way to end 2005, I think.<br /> <br /> S: Kudos to Judge John Jones.<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Judge.<br /> <br /> P: Hear, hear.<br /> <br /> == Interview with Jan Helen McGee, Psychic Detective ==<br /> <br /> === Interview &lt;small&gt;(20:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: And so joining us now is <br /> [[http://www.janhelenmcgee.com Jan Helen McGee]]. <br /> &lt;ref&gt;[[http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=172.0 Follow up forum comments on Jan Helen McGee]]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> Jan Helen, as she tells us she likes to be called, was involved recently in a murder investigation. She is a physic detective who investigated the case of the murder of Mark Arnold. The murder occurred in 1993. She assisted Detective Paul Zechman in the case, and according to newspaper reports, etc., provided the probable location of the murderer, who was then found. The murderer was Robert Wise. So, Helen, Jan Helen, I'm sorry, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> JM: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you for joining us and agreeing to be confronted by four skeptics.<br /> <br /> JM: Ha, ha. You're pretty good with the Helen part, too, because Helen, my middle name, is the name that I've always used when I work on these cases. It's only recently that I've decided to talk about my involvement. It's always been a secret. The only police officer or detective that knew my real name was my direct link. The rest of the detectives that were working on the case only knew me as &quot;Helen&quot;.<br /> <br /> S: I see. Why don't you tell us about this case? Just start from the beginning and tell us how you got involved.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I had worked very peripherally on a case prior to this with some detectives in my town, Lebanon, Pennsylvania, another murderer in Palmyra? This was the first big case I worked on. What happened was I had a dream. Frankly, my whole life I've had murder dreams. I didn't connect them with actual murders until it became quite clear in 1993. That night, before I started working on the case, I had a really scary dream, and I woke up my then husband and told him about the dream. Frankly, he woke up because I gasped from the fear that I had about the dream because I saw the actual murder. I told him the whole story of the dream and the murder, went back to sleep, and then in the morning I had this strong desire to go get a newspaper, which is something I never did &amp;ndash; drive to go get a paper. So I did, and when I picked up the paper, there on the front page was a picture of the building, and it was just a one-room shack-type building, and it was exactly like in my dream. I brought it home, and everything in the article was exactly as I had described it in the dream, and my husband at the time just kept pushing me. He said &quot;You just have to call the police&quot;. You can't, you don't have another choice.&quot; So I made a call to the local county detectives, and told him the things from the dream and then some other information. Then I went on my computer and typed up some added information, some thoughts that I had, and sent those to him.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: After that, I went in to his office and talked to him. Then, we sort of both decided I would go to the site, to the murder site, and see if I had any more insights. So then one Saturday morning, I went in to &amp;ndash; met them at the municipal building, and the chief county detective, Paul Zechman, took me in to a room that was just filled with detectives, maybe between five and eight of them, because what they were doing that day was they had decided to close down the site. The site had been open for several weeks, since this was a few weeks after the murder that this happened. And they were doing their very last collection. Somebody was coming down from Harrisburg to do some blood collection, and they were forensic people. This was like the last of the forensic, the last time to go on the site before they released it back to the owner. I got in there into that room, and there were all these detectives, and they were very, very unhappy because they had to work early, it was like 7:30 on a Saturday morning. They also weren't very happy to see me.<br /> <br /> S: Do they get many murders in that town, or was this maybe a first for them?<br /> <br /> JM: No, there's murder's in this town. I think it's a town of thirty thousand, so there's a murder every year. It doesn't have a high crime rate, but it doesn't have a real low crime rate. The city itself even though I live in the county, the city itself has some trouble. So they weren't totally new to it. But I would say it's a pretty safe town, relatively safe, small town outside of Harrisburg. I was in that room, and Paul Zechman said &quot;OK, Helen, tell everybody what you told me.&quot; And then he left me in that room. I just sat down and I proceeded to tell the other detectives what I felt I knew about the case. One of the things that I was obsessed with that really had no meaning on the case, necessarily, but seemed very, very important to me, and it was a pathway, I think, so I guess in retrospect it's a little bit important, because it led me down a path. But one thing I saw in this one-room building was that the victim had over twenty-five black, rotary phones.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Those phones from the forties. And I just couldn't believe it, and I just kept talking about these phones. Finally I realized that only one of the phones was hooked up, and that he talked constantly, sat at his desk, and he talked constantly on the phone. And then I sort of got to the point where I felt that he was talking to his best friend on the phone. And then that's how I reached the conclusion that his best friend had killed him.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. What was the significant of the black rotary phone in the actual case?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, there really wasn't any. After I told the detectives in the room the things I knew, then we all packed up went out to the site, and it was snowing. There was some snow on the ground, and everybody was sort of milling around, and I was just walking around. One of the other detectives insisted that I look inside this building, and I really didn't want to, because, as it just sounds so bizarre, but when I saw the murder, and this isn't just in my dream, because I remember very little of my dreams. But wen I see these murders, I sometimes switch from the victim to the killer, and then sometimes I sort of float. When I saw this all happening, I was sort of &amp;ndash; this just sounds so bizarre &amp;ndash; I was sort of floating above the floor as I watched it, and it's very &amp;ndash; it makes me feel physically ill when I go through these scenes and work on these cases. So I really didn't want to revisit that part. I felt I had told enough of it, but this one detective just insisted I look in there. Before I looked in, another thing that I knew about was that these two men had shared a meal together before the one killed the other. So when he opened the door and I looked inside the one-room building, I was quite shocked myself, because I didn't know that I was really &amp;ndash; I didn't have a clue that I was good at this. I just was driven to share my information. And when I looked in there, there were over twenty-five &amp;ndash; I've never seen so many black rotary phones. They were everywhere. They were on the chair. This was sort of a messy place. They were on the chair. They were on the counter. They were on the bookshelf. They were on every available surface &amp;ndash; had a black rotary phone. And then to the left was the desk that I had envisioned and the phone that was actually working. And then it was really creepy for me, because I looked over to the stove &amp;ndash; there was a stove in there &amp;ndash; and on the stove was a big pan with congealed meat.<br /> <br /> S: You mentioned that you don't remember what you dreamed but you re-live the murder in a vision. So this a waking vision that you get?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. The best way I can describe it to people, because a lot of people always want to know how do I see things. To me it's like a memory. Say for example you're in a grocery store, and you see someone, and they ring a bell. You say &quot;I think I know that person, but I don't know how or who they are.&quot; Then you walk, maybe around to the next aisle, and all of a sudden, you start realizing that that person went to school with you. And then you go down another pathway of memory that says &quot;Oh, that's right. It was middle school.&quot; And the next path might be &quot;Oh, it was Mrs. Jackson's room.&quot; And then suddenly you realize that it was art class, you can see, even though it might be twenty, thirty years ago, the memory just comes at you like it was yesterday. You can smell the room. You can see who's sitting next to you. You can remember the nervous habits of Mrs. Jackson, and then just the whole room opens up.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: To me, it's just like a memory. I go back a pathway, sometimes. I mean, sometimes things come very clearly. This case, even though I was obsessed with the fact that after this man killed his friend, he went outside and smoked a cigarette, tried to figure out what he was going to do, and then decided to steal his friend's identity, because he wanted to be his friend. But then I remembered that I was standing &amp;ndash; they were ready to close the site, and I was just standing there with Paul Zechman, and suddenly he said &quot;Where did he go?&quot; And that's when I told him he went to the beach. To me, it's not only my visions, if you want to call them, but also other's people's interpretations of what I say. Because I really think that in any kind of murder case, there are teams, and I feel like I was an important part of this team, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... but just a part of the team nonetheless. Just one puzzle piece. A puzzle can't be put together without lots of pieces, and I was one puzzle piece. If he hadn't asked me where he went, I might not even have mentioned that.<br /> <br /> S: But until he asked that question, had you had any visions about where he went after the murder?<br /> <br /> JM: No, because I was so upset that he killed his best friend, and then it's just not very pleasant, but I become the murderer.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I see their reasoning, and I find them very &amp;ndash; I sort of get on their side, as awful as it sounds, and the killer wanted to be the victim. As messed up as that sounds ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... he wanted to be his best friend. He adored his family. He was divorced, but his ex-wife, the victim's ex-wife was very, very solicitous towards him, took care of him, checked in on him, he had a lovely son. The killer wanted his son. He wanted his family. He wanted his life. He ended up stealing his car. I found out later he stole his car, his stole his wallet, he stole his whole identity. I was obsessed with them being best friends. I could hardly get past the fact that you would have a lovely meal with your best friend, and then he would just kill you. Without Paul's question, I don't know if I ever would have gone there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But when he asked the question, did you have a vision at that moment, or the information was with you already?<br /> <br /> JM: It just came right out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I hadn't even thought about it. It just came right out of my mouth. I said &quot;He's at the beach.&quot; And then I just thought it was so bizarre, because there was snow all over the ground. Who would go to the beach in the snow? And then I could see that he had gone to the beach when he was a child, and this was a safe place for him. So I told Paul that I didn't think he was at the Jersey beach. Now here in this town, when people vacation, they always go to the New Jersey beach.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: So that would be the first thought. He's definitely not at the New Jersey beach, but I thought it was either <br /> [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehoboth_Beach,_Delaware Rehovoth Beach, Delaware]]<br /> or Ocean City, Maryland. And then I was suddenly &amp;ndash; it was just like I realized he was definitely there.<br /> <br /> S: At one of those two places.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Now I said &quot;Are they close?&quot; And Paul said they were sort of close. Because when I do this work I become very right-brained, and I have to sort of float. It's like &amp;ndash; I'm a musician, I'm a music teacher, and when I play music, and really want to interpret it properly, I have to get into my right-brained activity, and I have to act sort of floaty. And that's the same thing that I have to do here. Any left-brain activity sort of leads me. There's lot's of things I don't quite get when I'm working on cases.<br /> <br /> S: I see, so you're not good with directions when you're in this state.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I don't even like driving. I don't like being in charge of anything. I just like to sort of just let myself go, like you do when you're falling asleep. Sort of.<br /> <br /> S: Now is this something you've always been able to do, say when you were a little girl?<br /> <br /> JM: Sure. The first memory I have is I lived in a row house up until I was two, so this was before I was two years old. I remember waking up in my crib and standing up and feeling the urge to cry for my mother, but then I remember being able to see through the walls and see through the floor and see where she was in the house, so that I didn't have to cry because I knew that she was in the house with me and I didn't have to be afraid and that she would come. Then the next memory that I have is I must have been about kindergarten age, because I remember the sequence was that I asked my mother if I could go in the front yard alone. She'd let me in the back yard alone, but not in the front yard alone, because it was a busy street out front. And then I remember she finally decided that I was old enough. So maybe I was even six, but probably five, because I remember I walked to school alone in first grade when I was six, so I was probably kindergarten age. And she let me go in the front yard. And I used to go behind this big, big, fat tree that I could completely hide behind, and I would move around the tree and stare at the neighbors, and I remember that I could see through the tree and see through their walls and watch what they were doing. And we had ladies that were widows, and three of them were widows, and they really led a pretty boring life, so I didn't really like watching them.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: But right next door to us was a family that was totally out of control, and so mostly I would go in the front. In retrospect, it seems so odd, but I would stand there with my back to the tree, but I would look back through the tree and so that I could sort of lean against the tree, and my face didn't have to be against the tree and so I could look back through the tree and through the house, and the mother would always be screaming and she would throw herself on the stairs and cry and then the husband would come down the steps and he'd yell and then he'd slam the door and go out to his car and peel away down the alley.<br /> <br /> S: Did you have any other paranormal experiences as a child or older? Have you ever seen a ghost, for example?<br /> <br /> JM: (laughs) I don't really ... I ... I see dead people. I don't really like the term &quot;ghost&quot;, because it has such a bad connotation. I don't see lots of dead people. I don't really like to see dead people or to talk to dead people or have them talk to me, but I do. But not very often. And I think I always have known when there were ghosts in houses. I could pass houses when I was in the car and see which ones &amp;ndash; I remember seeing &quot;Oh, that one has a ghost.&quot; and &quot;That one's haunted.&quot; That's what I guess I could deem a friendly ghost, ... <br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... and that's an unsettled ghost. I always consider them unsettled when they're not very happy.<br /> <br /> S: So do they ever talk to you?<br /> <br /> JM: Dead people?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> JM: Yes. But not in the way that live people talk to me. I get these messages, and they're just &amp;ndash; it's information. The only way I can think to explain it is I really believe that it's the historical speaking in tongues ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: ... when I give information, because my brain doesn't feel like it's giving the information. I feel like it's coming through my body, like my body is like a radio or a conduit for the information. So it's not like I actually hear someone's voice that has died. I just get the information and then it comes out of my mouth.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: But I really don't like dealing with dead people. It's just something I can do like an artist.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Is it frightening or just unpleasant?<br /> <br /> JM: The murder cases are unpleasant, but I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for anybody else working on the case. Any of the police detectives or the forensic people or the coroner. I don't think it's any more unpleasant for me than it is for them. It's a very unpleasant job to have to do. Am I afraid? No, I'm never afraid. And I think that it makes me feel sick, but I don't think it makes feel any more sick than anybody else than an EMT or anybody that has to deal with things like that.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: It's upsetting, but no more for me. I'm really not afraid of anything. I used to be afraid of the dreams, but what's so wonderful is that since that 1993 dream, I don't have murder dreams any more.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. That was the last one.<br /> <br /> JM: That was the last one, and I'd had them all my life, and so I think it's real important that I keep working on murder cases, because now my visions come during the day when I'm strong enough to deal with them, and I can have my nice peaceful sleep.<br /> <br /> B: What do you dream about now? Do you remember your dreams now?<br /> <br /> JM: Fun things. Vacations. Old boyfriends. Just normal things. Once in awhile I'll wake up with my jaw clenched and not quite know what it is. But it's usually just nothing, just nebulous dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: Nothing that really means anything. Just worry dreams. I have a few of those dreams, like you are late for something. I constantly have this dream that I'm getting ready to go on vacation and I can't find the clothes to pack, and I'm going to miss the plane. Just those dreams.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. Typical anxiety dreams.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Anxiety dreams. Right. But I don't have those murder any more. I'm so thrilled.<br /> <br /> S: So, again, we are talking to Jan Helen McGee. Evan, go ahead, you had a question for her?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah. Jan Helen, you mentioned other or at least alluded that you've worked on some other murder cases. How many have you worked on?<br /> <br /> JM: Well it's really hard to say, because until just recently I would just work on them and really not pay too much attention. I would say probably as much &amp;ndash; I work on them until I run out of energy. So maybe three to six murder cases a year since '93.<br /> <br /> E: Three to six.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. Since 1993.<br /> <br /> E: What sort of successes have you experienced with those cases?<br /> <br /> JM: Frankly, I'm not sure, because what happens is I work on the case, and I tell all the information, and then I just walk out of the room and don't ever contact the police again, and I don't even care or find out. The only reason I found out about this case was because Paul Zechman was on a show called &quot;The FBI Files&quot; on the Palmyra murder from this murder I had worked on previously. And after he finished filming that for New Dominion Pictures, they asked him if he knew of any psychics, and he told them about me, but said that I'm very private, and that he would call me, and when he did, I said &quot;Paul, of course not.&quot; I've kept this a secret. I don't want to talk to anybody, especially not television. And then there was silence and &quot;Oh, you want me to do this, right?&quot; And he said &quot;I think you should,&quot; because he knew that what my goal, one of my goals is to teach law enforcement to use their psychic ability. How to &amp;ndash; there's physical manifestations that we all have, that all psychics have, and I think that they can be pin-pointed, that they can pin-point psychics within law enforcement. So he said this will get you what you want.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: That's the only reason I know about this case.<br /> <br /> E: Sure. I'm just curious if you're curious at all about what could be deemed your rate of success as far as your psychics visions go and to how they actually turn out. Would you venture a guess maybe in a percentage of how often they are accurate?<br /> <br /> JM: I'd say a hundred. That doesn't mean that I solve every single case.<br /> <br /> E: No.<br /> <br /> JM: One time I worked on a robbery. I seldom work on robberies, but I remember early on, it was probably 1994 I worked on a robbery, and I called a cold call to a cop.<br /> <br /> E: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And he just flat out told me this was ridiculous. And I told him I don't know how it can harm you to write down what I say so I can get this out of my brain. So he did, and a year later he called me back, apologetic, and telling me every single thing I said was true, and he's so sorry, and he doesn't know why he acted like such a jerk. Other police, there's been cases that I've worked on that I know aren't solved, but part of it I think is that they didn't follow my advice. Paul Zechman trusted me and he did what I told him to do, and so if I give my information and the police do not do what I suggest, then it's not going to get solved. So as far as I'm concerned, I think my information is a hundred per cent. It's one of the few times in life I'm right.<br /> <br /> S: Can you turn your attention to a case and come up with information, or can you choose the cases, in other words, or do they choose you?<br /> <br /> JM: A little bit of both. Most of the time, I'll pick up the newspaper or I'll see something on the television, and then I'll say &quot;Oh, now. No, no. That's not the way it went.&quot; Or I'll know something, and then I'll just call. Sometimes, I've been called by police all over the state, and even out of state, for help, and then I can just work on that case. Occasionally, I don't know anything at all, but mostly I have something to go on.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think of other psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: I think most psychics are scam psychics.<br /> <br /> S: Most of them are not genuine.<br /> <br /> B: How do they work? How does their scams work?<br /> <br /> JM: You know, I think it's just like any other scam. Are you men scientists?<br /> <br /> S: Some of us.<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> E: Some by trade. Other by interest.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. By trade or interest. Right. So you have scientific thinking. So you know scam scientists.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: They're scams in every walk of life, and they all work the same. They're very smart in that area, and they use tricks, and they BS.<br /> <br /> B: It's intentional. Sometimes it can be intentional, other times it can be more of a self-delusion, thinking they might think that they're not &amp;ndash; they might not be intentionally scamming, but sometimes they do. You come across all different types.<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly, but I don't think it's any different from any other scam, whether it's a scam lawyer, or ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... somebody says they're an FBI man, and they're scamming some girl. No matter what it is, he uses the exact same trick.<br /> <br /> S: So how can we tell the difference between the scam psychic detectives and the genuine psychic detectives?<br /> <br /> JM: Well, I'm coming out with a book that's called ''Psychic Surge: Don't Get Scammed''. Frankly, the book is over a hundred pages of all the different ways you have to go about to not get scammed. I think that it's just the same as a doctor. You need to find references. In my case, no police detective has ever worked with me without calling my references.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And I have a profiler, which &amp;ndash; a profiler &amp;ndash; there's only two profilers in the state of Pennsylvania that I know of. And one of them vouches for me. And then, Paul Zechman always vouches for me. But have a whole long list now, but before I alway used the two of them. One thing is to find references. I think that you have to your instinct and your intellect if you are using a psychic because if you're like I was at the Hershey Hotel and sat down next to a psychic and she told me &amp;ndash; everything she told me was wrong, and it was clearly wrong. So I knew right away that she wasn't accurate. If she said six things, none of which are accurate, then I can see right there. I think you just can't let yourself get hoodwinked.<br /> <br /> S: Well, we certainly agree with that.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. It's just like any other scam person. You take their information, you check out their credentials, and use everything you can ... <br /> <br /> S: What would a credential be? In this field, there aren't really any credentials, because there is no gold standard. That begs the question that of course we're interested in as scientists and skeptics is how do we know if this phenomenon is even genuine at all from a scientific point of view, not necessarily from a personal point of view, but in the abstract.<br /> <br /> JM: Well I think most psychics are scam psychics, and as far as proof, do you love someone? Do you love someone?<br /> <br /> S: Of course I do.<br /> <br /> JM: But can you prove it?<br /> <br /> S: Well, that is not a scientific claim. If you make a claim about the facts of nature, that requires science. Making a claim about a subjective feeling is just completely different, so you really can't compare the two.<br /> <br /> JM: Well, this is a subjective feeling. If that's what you want to be ...<br /> <br /> S: But you have tangible &amp;ndash; but you are claiming tangible results, though, right?<br /> <br /> JM: But there are tangible results to love.<br /> <br /> S: The two types of claims are not comparable in terms of that analogy that you're trying to draw. Either a phenomenon is real or it isn't real. And if it's real, then there needs to be manifestations that can be objectively determined. Are you making the argument that there's no way science can ever validate your abilities?<br /> <br /> JM: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: And why is that? Why would it be impossible to validate your abilities if they're real?<br /> <br /> JM: I think you could validate my results, like you validate the results of love.<br /> <br /> E: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: Love makes you feel wonderful, love makes you kinder, more caring, and so you can go to Paul Zechman, a man who is the chief county detective in this town, a man who stakes his reputation on his good work, a man that you will see on the television show is a conservative, careful, slow-moving man, and he will tell you that I found his &amp;ndash; I enabled him to find his murderer.<br /> <br /> S: And we of course we accept that fact that he probably believes that, and again you knew coming in that we were skeptics and that ...<br /> <br /> JM: Oh, I don't mind.<br /> <br /> S: What are interpretation of all of this is a little bit different. We don't necessarily question people's motives or beliefs, because we can't read people's minds, so we don't know what people really think or believe. Our interest is on the tangible, verifiable results. We do know and just from experience with many, many different paranormal phenomenon that the capacity for people to be fooled by themselves, by events, is enormous, and the purpose of science is to essentially control for the really vast human tendency to deceive ourselves. Let me ask you a question. If we wanted to subject to some very basic common-sense controls to see if we could validate the results of your investigations, would you be willing to do that?<br /> <br /> JM: If I felt that &amp;ndash; I would be willing to do anything that was moving forward for good.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: I absolutely refuse to try to pick numbers or to try to make guesses, because my gift is not here to tell anybody something they already know.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: My gift is to find out what people don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Well let me give you an example. Because this is ...<br /> <br /> JM: Okay, and then I will tell you the way I think you should test me.<br /> <br /> S: Sure. Absolutely. When you get involved with a new case, really the only thing that we would need to do would be to record all of the information that you produced about the case before the investigation reaches it conclusion. And then in some sort of objective way compare what you predicted to what was actually discovered. That's all. It's very straight-forward.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, you can do national cases as far as I'm concerned. Every time there's a national case, you can call me and I can tell you if I know something and where we go, or you can just pick a case. You can find a case where you live. You don't have to tell me hardly anything. You can find an unsolved murder case and we can see if we can go down that avenue.<br /> <br /> S: That's great! I think that would be very instructive, and if your goal is to promote the use psychic detectives and to teach people how to use them correctly, this is the way to do it, in my opinion, because you could silence us, you could silence all the skeptics with verifiable data. That's really all we are asking for. In fact, we screen applicants for the Randi's Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. And we could do this as a screening test.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Because I really don't like the way he does things, because I just don't see how that's to humankind's good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, donate the money to charity. Do whatever you want with it. The point is it's a very public undeniable test.<br /> <br /> JM: Yeah. I don't have a problem with the money. I just don't want to do a test that is just not for the public good, because when I do any kind of work in this way, it takes a huge amount of energy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: And when I work on a murder case I often physically get ill.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: So, if I'm going to do this and takes this energy to try &amp;ndash; because I really don't have any interest in proving it to anyone.<br /> <br /> S: I understand.<br /> <br /> JM: It's just is. But I would be glad to work on more murder cases.<br /> <br /> S: That's great, but all we would ask is that you do what you're doing anyway. Do the cases that you're going to do anyway.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But we'll just verify them in a way that doesn't leave any room for guesswork. That we know that we can measure it in a scientific way the accuracy of the predictions that you make. <br /> <br /> JM: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: We will allow you to set the parameters anyway you want to, as long as it allows for some objective observation and conclusions at the end.<br /> <br /> P: Jan Helen, you said you were going to give us a suggestion about how to test you. Out of curiosity, how would you test yourself?<br /> <br /> JM: Exactly like you said. I would like to work on murder cases, and you go ahead and find out how much of my information is accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, that's great! So we're in basic agreement. That's good.<br /> <br /> S: That's great. So we definitely would like to do that, because that I think it wasn't our purpose to debate with you here tonight. We really wanted to hear your experience and your side of the story.<br /> <br /> JM: Another thing that I can do is that if you physically put ten people in front of me I can probably tell what's physically wrong with all ten of them.<br /> <br /> S: You make like medical diagnoses?<br /> <br /> E: That's very testable.<br /> <br /> JM: I'm not a medicine person, but I can see what's wrong with them. What part of their body is weak ...<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> JM: ... has a weakness.<br /> <br /> JM: So you could ask all ten people what was wrong with them in advance, and you could see that.<br /> <br /> S: Give me an example of the kind of statement that you would make. You said what part of the body.<br /> <br /> JM: It usually just comes out with &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Okay, something like that &quot;Your right hip hurts.&quot;<br /> <br /> JM: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> S: Do you mention specific diseases like &quot;You have diabetes&quot;? That sort of thing.<br /> <br /> JM: No.<br /> <br /> S: No.<br /> <br /> JM: No, I'm not that accurate, because I'm not a medical person.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's just more basic symptoms.<br /> <br /> JM: No I can usually just see that bone, muscle, or blood, and if it's &amp;ndash; I can also see if it's inherited or if it was an injury.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> B: Steve, that's a lot more easy to test than going through an entire murder case and investigation and following it to its conclusion and then doing a comparison. I not saying we can't do that.<br /> <br /> S: Well, that would be another &amp;ndash; an easier test.<br /> <br /> E: Two different tests.<br /> <br /> S: But I think we should do both. They're different kinds of tests.<br /> <br /> JM: Right. Right. And you know frankly, I just think I get a lot more power on the murder stuff, but I just know that's one other thing that I'm good at.<br /> <br /> E: Jan Helen, do you have to be in the room to see what's wrong with them, or do you it from afar, or you have to be in close proximity?<br /> <br /> JM: With the health problems, I usually like to be in a room with the person.<br /> <br /> E: In a room.<br /> <br /> JM: With the murder cases, I ... Murder cases I often start on the phone. But then when it starts to get upsetting, I usually like to be with a police officer, so I'm just wondering how that's going to go, but if we get to that point, there's no reason why you couldn't &amp;ndash; if there was a case, there's no reason why I couldn't also talk to the police officer and possibly they would let you be there, or have me continue with them. If it gets to that point, we'd want to continue and at least pass off my information to a detective.<br /> <br /> P: Is there an average amount of time, Jan Helen, that it takes to work on a murder case? Is it a number of hours, days?<br /> <br /> JM: Usually, I have three different meetings. The first meeting I make the cold call. Then I type things into my computer and send them. Then the next thing is usually the police have me come in, and I go through more information I might have. The detective might have maybe three questions. I usually tell them not to talk at all. I don't like them to talk about anything.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> JM: And, occasionally I have a question, like why couldn't the victim get out of the bed, and I remember that they said because the victim was in a wheel chair, so he couldn't run away from the problem. Then after that, then usually I go to the site, the murder site. So, that's about it, four ...<br /> <br /> P: I see. I see.<br /> <br /> JM: Four different times. And it can be maybe two to four hours when I meet them. Maybe two hours at the meeting, and a couple hours to go to the murder site and maybe drive by some other area where maybe something to do with the crime that the police officer wants to show me. The initial meeting on the phone, that's just pretty brief, and then I send out my information that I type up, and that's usually &amp;ndash; I usually write one to two full pages. And then, when I call again then we schedule a meeting. Because usually as a result of what I've written, I have so much accuracy that then they schedule a meeting with me. Stuff that nobody could know.<br /> <br /> P: Do you ever encounter police who are hostile to working with you?<br /> <br /> JM: Of course!<br /> <br /> P: Don't want to hear what you have to say, hang up, et cetera.<br /> <br /> JM: Almost all of them. Almost all of them don't want to hear what I have to say. Because there's a lot of scam psychics call them, and a lot of them have never worked with anybody like me before. But I have a Master of Arts degree, and I'm a music teacher, and I have a reputation to uphold, and I have really good references. So, pretty much a good detective, though, is always going to listen to anything someone tells them. They might not go on for the six to eight, maybe six to eight hours it takes to talk to me, but they're sure going to take the information. Briefly, at least.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: But then once I tell them things that nobody knows ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> JM: ... then they all go further with me.<br /> <br /> S: Jan Helen, it was a pleasure to have you on the Skeptic's Guide. Thank you for sharing all of that with us. I look forward to working with you in the future. It sounds like we have an agreement that you will do a investigative murder case under our observation, so we can basically tally your accuracy. We'll be in touch off the air with the details, but that is excellent. I'm looking forward to doing that.<br /> <br /> JM: Try to pick the victim being a male instead female.<br /> <br /> S: Victim a male. Any details you want we will do. We always try to design these ...<br /> <br /> JM: I can do either.<br /> <br /> S: ... to accomodate the claimant as much as possible. <br /> <br /> JM: Disregard that. I'll do anybody.<br /> <br /> P: Okay.<br /> <br /> JM: It's all right.<br /> <br /> S: But we want you to feel as comfortable as possible. Whatever details will make you ...<br /> <br /> JM: When I like when they're bad guys.<br /> <br /> S: Bad guys.<br /> <br /> JM: But you don't have to find bad guys killing bad guys. Whatever you want to do. I'll do any cases, because it's real important to me to help society as much as I possibly can.<br /> <br /> P: Excellent.<br /> <br /> S: Great! Well thanks again.<br /> <br /> JM: Sure, thank you.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> JM: Bye.<br /> <br /> === Discussion &lt;small&gt;(1:01:30)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, that was our first interview with a non-skeptic. It was quite interesting. What did you guys think of Jan Helen?<br /> <br /> P: I thought she was very lively. I thought she was very interesting, and of course the thing I take away from this is her agreement to be tested ...<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: ... by the New England Skeptical Society.<br /> <br /> S: That's going to be the only way to get anything meaningful out of this in scientifically. I mean, her claims are so glowing. She thinks she has a hundred percent accuracy?<br /> <br /> E: Hundred percent accuracy. That's what she said.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. When you start saying your predictions, if they didn't come true they will in the future in some indefinite time, then you could easily believe that, &quot;hey, I'm hundred percent&quot;. I never make a mistake if you leave it wide open to the future.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: But, Bob, remember she said in the interview when she deals with these murder cases, she's looking only into the past. So, it has happened. She claimed a hundred percent accuracy to that, with no pleading to any future predictions.<br /> <br /> S: You guys are both referring to comments she made to us ... <br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... while we were recording. But when she makes predictions, sometimes they are predictions of the future, and that's why they may not be true at that moment, but when she does do her murder cases, she's always looking into the past. But we'll propose to her two tests, actually. The simple one will be for her to &amp;ndash; she can basically detect medical symptoms or ailments. She did it for us over the phone, in fact. That will be very easy to test. And then, the next time we have a viable murder case that's regionally convenient, geographically convenient, then we need to get her to list all of her predictions ahead of time before the details of the case are known, and then we'll compare that list to whatever details eventually come to light, point by point. She won't get to pick and choose or morph them to fit what ultimately happens or just remember the hits and forget the misses. It will be instructive. As usual, the most instructive thing will be how she responds after the test is completed. But we will see. We did get her to agree to a test. So, stay tuned for her episode.<br /> <br /> P: Not only did she agree, she seemed eager.<br /> <br /> S: She seemed eager. My impression is that she really believes in her abilities. I got a little bit of a sense of a phantasy-prone personality from some of the history that she gave. So I think she's probably sincere. I think just ...<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, (unintelligible) .<br /> <br /> S: It sounds like she does a little bit of a cold reading when she sits down with the detectives to glean some of the details of the case. She works with detectives who believe in her ability, so that makes cold reading real easy, when you're dealing with a subject who is pre-disposed to believing in your abilities. But, again, sitting here all we can do is speculate. We need to gather some first-hand information, and we'll do that. We tried to bait her with the million dollars, and she didn't seem too eager about that. That's actually a little bit of a red flag. I would think that if someone genuinely believed in their own powers, especially if they think they are a hundred percent, that they would be most eager to snatch up that million dollars.<br /> <br /> P: I have never heard anybody with a paranormal claim of any kind say anything good about Randi's challenge.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: Never! &quot;He doesn't do it right. He sets it up so you can't win&quot;. They hate it. They hate him, and they hate it.<br /> <br /> E: What they don't realize ...<br /> <br /> S: Because what he does is scientifically accurate.<br /> <br /> P: Right. <br /> <br /> B: It makes them look so bad. Think about it. That's such a huge thing that he's willing to give anyone a million dollars.<br /> <br /> E: Right. Folks, just so you know, what he wants you to do, in your application for the million-dollar challenge is state what you can do and with what percent &amp;ndash; what degree of success. And that's basically all the information he's looking for. And most of the applicants can not answer those questions.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> E: And they cannot put into a cohesive statement.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But we'll do that. I've made up several protocols now to screen applicants for that. It's a negotiation. It's a discussion back and forth to get them to coalesce their claims into something tangible and to come up with a way to score it and a threshold for what we would consider to be success. One guy &amp;ndash; it was interesting &amp;ndash; one guy wasn't sure why we weren't going to use a P-value of .05, which basically means a one-in-twenty chance of having a positive result by random chance alone. Well, you know, Randi can't give a million dollars to every twentieth person that he tests ...<br /> <br /> B: Right. <br /> <br /> S: ... the psychic challenge. But anyway, so we'll do that. And if she wants to, we could screen her for the Randi Challenge, and if she passes, we'll be happy to pass her along to Randi. But no one apparently has ever gotten through the screening phase of the challenge. So again, we'll definitely follow up on this in the future. We're also having discussions with the detective on this particular case. He may or may not come on the show on a future episode, but we'll at least talk to him about the case and see if we can get some further details. He was not available for tonight.<br /> <br /> S: Well guys, it was another fun episode. Thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Our pleasure as usual.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro18}} <br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |ESP = y &lt;!--JHM interview--&gt;<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!--Dover case--&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9600 2015-01-25T06:00:49Z

<p>WearSunScreen: removing flag for proof reading</p> <hr /> <div><br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize, man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational, but what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us actually like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;[[wikipedia:Beyond_Reality_(TV_series)|Beyond Reality]].&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing ... the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the [[wikipedia:1988_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike|writer's strike in the late 1980's]] when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to aggression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to aggression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe aggression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustration or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the aggressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustration in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the ''Catharsis Hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sorts of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like ''[[The Simpsons]]'' or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''[http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/2005/050421.Sparks.violence.html Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters].'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''[[wikipedia:Excitation-transfer_theory|excitation transfer effect]]''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For a while in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium, it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: It's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparative study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven], and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9599 2015-01-25T05:59:33Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Belgium Adolescents Study (55:26) */ Spelling, cleaning formatting.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize, man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational, but what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us actually like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;[[wikipedia:Beyond_Reality_(TV_series)|Beyond Reality]].&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing ... the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the [[wikipedia:1988_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike|writer's strike in the late 1980's]] when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to aggression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to aggression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe aggression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustration or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the aggressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustration in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the ''Catharsis Hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sorts of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like ''[[The Simpsons]]'' or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''[http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/2005/050421.Sparks.violence.html Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters].'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''[[wikipedia:Excitation-transfer_theory|excitation transfer effect]]''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For a while in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium, it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: It's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparative study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven], and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9598 2015-01-25T05:46:38Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* The Internet as Media (52:12) */ spelling, and punctuation for clarity</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize, man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational, but what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us actually like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;[[wikipedia:Beyond_Reality_(TV_series)|Beyond Reality]].&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing ... the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the [[wikipedia:1988_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike|writer's strike in the late 1980's]] when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to aggression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to aggression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe aggression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustration or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the aggressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustration in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the ''Catharsis Hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sorts of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like ''[[The Simpsons]]'' or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''[http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/2005/050421.Sparks.violence.html Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters].'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''[[wikipedia:Excitation-transfer_theory|excitation transfer effect]]''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For a while in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium, it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: It's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9597 2015-01-25T05:40:24Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* The Roller Coaster Effect  (47:20)  */ Added link, spelling correction.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize, man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational, but what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us actually like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;[[wikipedia:Beyond_Reality_(TV_series)|Beyond Reality]].&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing ... the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the [[wikipedia:1988_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike|writer's strike in the late 1980's]] when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to aggression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to aggression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe aggression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustration or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the aggressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustration in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the ''Catharsis Hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sorts of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like ''[[The Simpsons]]'' or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''[http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/2005/050421.Sparks.violence.html Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters].'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''[[wikipedia:Excitation-transfer_theory|excitation transfer effect]]''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For a while in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, Oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9596 2015-01-25T05:31:02Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Violence in the Media (36:00) */ spelling corrections</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize, man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational, but what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us actually like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;[[wikipedia:Beyond_Reality_(TV_series)|Beyond Reality]].&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing ... the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the [[wikipedia:1988_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike|writer's strike in the late 1980's]] when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to aggression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to aggression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe aggression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustration or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the aggressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustration in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the ''Catharsis Hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sorts of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like ''[[The Simpsons]]'' or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''[http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/2005/050421.Sparks.violence.html Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters].'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''excitation transfer effect''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For awhile in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, Oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9595 2015-01-25T05:13:14Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* The CSI Effect (33:20) */ Added link</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize, man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational, but what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us actually like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;[[wikipedia:Beyond_Reality_(TV_series)|Beyond Reality]].&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing ... the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the [[wikipedia:1988_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike|writer's strike in the late 1980's]] when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them, now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to agression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to agression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe agression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustation or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the agressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustation in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that÷<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the [http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095555741 <br /> ''Catharsis Hypothesis''].<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sort of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like &quot;The Simpsons&quot; or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters.'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''excitation transfer effect''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For awhile in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, Oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9594 2015-01-25T05:05:12Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Trends in Television (26:46) */ spelling, link, punctuation for clarity</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize, man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational, but what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us actually like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;[[wikipedia:Beyond_Reality_(TV_series)|Beyond Reality]].&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing ... the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the writer's strike in the late 1980's when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them, now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to agression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to agression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe agression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustation or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the agressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustation in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that÷<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the [http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095555741 <br /> ''Catharsis Hypothesis''].<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sort of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like &quot;The Simpsons&quot; or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters.'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''excitation transfer effect''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For awhile in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, Oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9593 2015-01-25T04:27:50Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Survey Results (16:18) */ added links</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the [[wikipedia:University_of_Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin, Madison]], there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find [[Purdue]] students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientifically illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize &quot;man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational. But what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us acutally like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;Beyond Reality.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the writer's strike in the late 1980's when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them, now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to agression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to agression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe agression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustation or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the agressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustation in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that÷<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the [http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095555741 <br /> ''Catharsis Hypothesis''].<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sort of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like &quot;The Simpsons&quot; or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters.'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''excitation transfer effect''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For awhile in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, Oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9592 2015-01-25T04:08:47Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* The Effect of Dramatic Recreations (9:50) */ Adding links</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what [[Bob Baker]] and [[wikipedia:Joe_Nickell|Joe Nickell]] have been describing as the ''[[fantasy-prone personality]]''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find Purdue students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientificly illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize &quot;man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational. But what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us acutally like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;Beyond Reality.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the writer's strike in the late 1980's when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them, now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to agression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to agression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe agression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustation or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the agressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustation in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that÷<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the [http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095555741 <br /> ''Catharsis Hypothesis''].<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sort of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like &quot;The Simpsons&quot; or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters.'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''excitation transfer effect''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For awhile in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, Oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_16&diff=9591 2015-01-25T03:57:31Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Glenn Sparks Interview (0:24) */ fixed typo, spelling, added links,</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y please remove commenting mark-up when some transcription present<br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 16<br /> |episodeDate = 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; October 2005<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LogoSGU.png<br /> |bob = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |perry = y<br /> |guest1 = GS: [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks]<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast10-12-05.mp3<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, October 12th, 2005. This is your host Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me today are Perry DeAngelis, ...<br /> <br /> P: Hello everybody.<br /> <br /> S: ... Bob Novella, ...<br /> <br /> B: Hello everyone.<br /> <br /> S: ... and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> == Glenn Sparks Interview &lt;small&gt;(0:24)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> <br /> S: This week we have a special guest, <br /> [http://www.glenngsparks.com/spark/welcome-2/ Glenn Sparks].<br /> Glenn, welcome to the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: Hi. Pleasure to be here.<br /> <br /> S: Glenn Sparks is a Professor of Communication at Purdue University, who has written extensively about the effects of media, specifically television viewing on beliefs and behavior, including belief in the paranormal, which is why he is on our show this week. He is the author of ''Media Effects Research, A Basic Overview'', which is an undergraduate text. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> === Media and Belief in the Paranormal &lt;small&gt;(0:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> Glenn, we were looking over a lot of the articles that you've written, some of which we've read in the past. Let's start with one that's obviously close to what we deal with: ''Investigating the Relationship Between Exposure to Television Programs That Depict Paranormal Phenomena and Belief In The Paranormal''. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, this was actually, I believe, the second major survey that I had done on this topic, and what I was trying to do here was really just see whether or not we could document a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly exposure to paranormal programming, and what they believed in the paranormal. Of course, if you find a relationship like this, it's difficult if not impossible from a survey to conclude that the programming leads people to adopt the beliefs.<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> GS: It could be the other way around.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People who believe in the paranormal watch shows about it.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But I was interested in seeing whether in the survey context we could at least document that there was a relationship between these two things.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And then, I've explored that relationship in the laboratory in an experimental setting to try to gather more understanding about the possible causal process that might be taking place there. So this was a random sample survey of the [[wikipedia:Lafayette,_Indiana|Lafayette]] area here in [[wikipedia:Indiana|Indiana]]. We had just over a hundred respondents, and we asked them questions about their belief in a variety of different paranormal phenomena, as well as questions about their typical viewing habits, ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... programs that they watched on television.<br /> <br /> S: Did you ask them about beliefs in other things that are not paranormal, just as a control kind of question?<br /> <br /> GS: In this particular study I think we did ask them, yes, we asked them about their religious beliefs as well. We asked them some of their basic habits when it came to religious practices like attending a religious service weekly and that sort of thing.<br /> <br /> S: What was the bottom line of your survey? There was a correlation?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We did find, as I have found before, that there is a relationship between people's media exposure, particularly in this case to paranormal programming, and what they believe about the paranormal. In this case, the relationship was particularly evident for people who reported that they had had prior direct experience with the paranormal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There's a hypothesis in media effects known as the ''resonance hypothesis''.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And the argument goes that if a person has direct experience with something, and then they also get reinforced with that same message or that same experience through their exposure to the media, it's kind of like having a double dose of the same message.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And so the idea is that they might be particularly cultivated into that belief system. I think in this study we found evidence for that kind of effect. It's called the ''resonance effect''.<br /> <br /> S: Now how would you control for just the idea that well if they had prior personal experience with the paranormal, that could indicate a prior belief in the paranormal, and wouldn't that tend to support the other hypothesis that the belief is causing the viewership, not the other way around. Right? How did you control for that?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. You really can't rule out that possible line of inquiry in a survey like this. You can't really, unless you have information about the time-order, and unless you have tried to control for all kinds of other variables.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: You really can't rule that out.<br /> <br /> S: So, where do you go from here on that kind of survey? You can't infer cause and effect from correlation, but you can try to look for multiple different questions ... <br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... to see if they all triangulate. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Where do you go?<br /> <br /> GS: The basic move that I make here is that I move the research into the laboratory ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... where I can gain a rather tight control over exposure to media messages and then the beliefs that people have. So I've done a series of laboratory experiments where I manipulate the nature of the message that a person sees.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In this case I might just vary one aspect of a television program. In some cases it's nothing more than just varying the tag at the beginning of the show.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In other cases I have manipulated, tried to manipulate whether or not the particular belief or the particular phenomenon that's being depicted is endorsed by a scientific source.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Or whether it's debunked or criticized. I try to manipulate that feature. And then I try to hide or to mask the true purpose of the studies. Subjects in these experiments are pretty savvy.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: I try to disguise what it is that I'm studying.<br /> <br /> S: Are they mainly students, mainly university students?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. So far it's been mainly students at the university. What I can do is I can pretty successfully disguise what we are studying by telling them to pay particular attention to TV commercials, and then in the postviewing session I can ask them all kinds of questions about their memory for TV commercials.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And they think that's what the study's about.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And then I can also slip in other measures, and when we ask them after the study what they think it was about, we find that that kind of procedure is usually successful. That's the kind of strategy I take.<br /> <br /> S: Great. So I remember you published some of these results or summarized them in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' a little while ago.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: I remember reading that article. I think what I was most fascinated by was the fact that almost any variable that you manipulated actually led to increased belief in the paranormal. Specifically, if the scientist endorsed the content, belief went up, and if the scientist expressed skepticism, belief also went up, as if any involvement of the scientist lent a certain credibility to the whole endeavor, even if the scientist was being skeptical. Is that basically right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, that's right. I did find that in one of the studies where I looked at exactly that, and that was what the study showed.<br /> <br /> S: Which was of course disheartening for us as skeptics, because it basically says whenever we try to get involved in these paranormal programs to try to interject some scientific skepticism, we're actually increasing belief in the paranormal by lending credibility to the whole endeavor.<br /> <br /> B: I think part of the reason might be just by having a scientist there, you're making the phenomenon credible by his mere presence. It gives some sort of cachet to it that it's like ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> B: ... maybe this really is a phenomenon. Look, we got a scientist talking about it. Regardless of what he's saying, which is kind of disappointing, but ...<br /> <br /> S: And also lends credibility to the attitude of the majority of mainstream scientists, which is you're better off just ignoring this, because if we even pay any attention to it, it gives it a credibility it doesn't deserve.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I think that to some extent that that is true, and we really need to investigate that effect ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... empirically more than we have. I think that that is particularly a risk right now. In the present environment you have a lot of shows that I would say they sort of tip their hat to the skeptical position.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But it's really not a very strong skeptical voice.<br /> <br /> S: Right. We call it token skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Token skepticism.<br /> <br /> S: We've basically learned our lesson not to be the token skeptic because it doesn't serve our purpose, and your research, your data reinforces that.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And we have to really have some kind of reassurance or control over the whole editorial content of the show. The show's got to be scientific and skeptical, not just a talking head saying &quot;this is crap,&quot; somewhere in the middle of the show for two seconds.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right. <br /> <br /> S: Just to finish this one point, I think the other lesson that we learned is not to pay attention to paranormal claims or paranormal topics which are essentially wallowing in their own obscurity or anonymity. Because we run the risk of elevating it to a stature it doesn't deserve. But I do think there are some paranormal topics that already have so much widespread belief or exposure that we really can't ignore them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think if you're talking about things like psychic detectives and UFO alien abductions, and those sorts of topics.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Talking to the dead.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, we're not going to give John Edwards any more exposure than he already has. But at least if there's a skeptical position out there for people to find who are looking for it, that serves a purpose.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> === The Effect of Dramatic Recreations &lt;small&gt;(9:50)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So tell us about some of the other variables that you thought were most interesting. One thing that I remember also was about the recreations, dramatic recreations. Actually, if I recall, that had the most dramatic effect on increasing belief. This is something that always ticks me off when I watch these UFO shows. You have a scientist correctly and reasonably explaining that while this particular eye-witness was describing the planet Venus, and then the producer of the show adds a dramatic animation over this guy's voice-over showing a flying saucer buzzing the police cars. So it makes the scientist look like a total idiot. He's innocently and correctly recounting what happened, and then the producer in the editing room voicing him over this dramatic recreation. You found in your research that just the mere presence of dramatic recreations had the most profound effect on belief. Is that right?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I did an experiment with unsolved mysteries.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Of course they recreated UFOs and UFO encounters in a very vivid way. In general, those recreations do have an impact. Interestingly, in that study, though, we found that individual difference variable made a difference.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That is people are different in their ability or tendency to create vivid images themselves.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: In that particular study, when we purged the original episode of all of those recreated images, we found that people who were very good at imaging, very high vivid imagers, tended to make up their own images.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: And ended up believing in UFOs or expressing pro-UFO beliefs more than people who were the low-imagers.<br /> <br /> S: So they created their own dramatic recreations in their mind.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Now is there any relationship between this and what Bob Baker and Joe Nickell have been describing as the ''fantasy-prone personality''? Is that the same thing as a ''vivid imager''?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That has not been studied to my knowledge explicitly, but I think that given what we know about that concept there could definitely be a connection there. This vivid imaging ability, I believe there is some literature which shows that people who are high in this also tend to be good at generating their own fantasies and that sort of thing. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: Right. That's interesting. Being fantasy-prone also correlates highly with belief in the paranormal, and your research might dovetail nicely with that basically saying that if you're exposing fantasy-prone people to paranormal programming, that further drives their belief.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. I think &amp;mdash; yes.<br /> <br /> S: Basically what we have is the subculture of very, very high degree of belief in the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Right.<br /> <br /> === Television-Watching Culture &lt;small&gt;(13:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Do you think this also says anything about our TV watching culture? Are we programmed to respond to images on television in a positive way or to accept perhaps uncritically the images that are being presented to us? Do you thing this is part of our TV culture, or is this basic human psychology?<br /> <br /> GS: I think it has to do with television specifically as a medium.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Since the 1960's, TV has in every major survey on the topic, it's been endorsed as the most believable, the most credible of all the mass media.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Because I think it's of course obviously it's an important source of news, and it has to be credible if we are going to believe the news. And I think that people generalize that over the medium. They get their trustworthy news from the medium, and so they just generalize across the medium in general. Yes, I think we are as a culture conditioned to accept ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... what we see on television as the truth.<br /> <br /> S: And that brings up the topic of ''docu-dramas'', which are basically drama shows masquerading as documentaries, and the very name of the genre sort of implies that. I don't think I've ever seen a docu-drama that I thought did a good service to science or the reasonable or scientific position. They tend to be shows which are pedaling mysteries and the paranormal. Basically, I think what has evolved out of exactly what you're saying, being conditioned to respond to something being told to us in an authoritative, news type of voice or format on television, we accept it unless we have a specific reason not to, we accept it on authority. You just take any topic you want, any fantastical or dramatic topic you want, repackage it as a news story, and there you have your docu-drama.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Exactly. I mean it's really just playing with the line, the clear line that we would like to be in the public's mind ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... between reality and fantasy, or reality and fiction. It's taking fictional themes and essentially saying &quot;No, these are real!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And giving that sort of layer of credibility to it ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... in a way that encourages people not to think about it and scrutinize it critically.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And I think what your research and what our sense of this is the format appears to be more important than the content ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... in terms of generating belief.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. We have apparently certain scripts that are primed or invoked when we watch television, and when we see the features of a credible newscast, it really in a sense shuts down critical thinking about the content. Well, OK. I see the familiar features of the newscast, and so I'm going to process this as news.<br /> <br /> === Survey Results &lt;small&gt;(16:18)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> E: Glenn, the results from the study that you conducted, were you surprised by them? Did you have any initial thoughts going into it as far as what you thought might occur, and were you surprised with the results?<br /> <br /> GS: I have to say that initially I actually was very surprised by a couple of the features of the research findings, and the first one really that just flabbergasted me was to find out, when I started doing surveys of students here at Purdue, the percentages of students who endorsed belief in paranormal phenomena. I just was not prepared for that. I actually got into this research you might say years ago when I was doing my graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, there was a history of science professor there, probably retired now, but he came up to me one day and he said, &quot;you know you study media effects, you've got to give some attention to paranormal programming in the media&quot;, because he really thought that this was a significant cause of paranormal beliefs, and I kind of filed it away and I didn't really think much of it. I thought &quot;Well, gee, I don't know about that.&quot; Then, in the late eighties when we started seeing these shows explode, really, in prime time, I kind of resurrected the idea, but I really didn't expect to find, certainly didn't expect to find Purdue students endorsing these beliefs widely as they did. And when I say that I'm talking about thirty-five, forty percent of the students surveyed.<br /> <br /> S: Back when you were naive. Thought that education ...<br /> <br /> GS: I really wasn't prepared for that. And I have to say too that I don't think I was really prepared to find the consistency that I have found in the experimental data ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of short exposures to programs having the kinds of effects that they have in terms of shifting peoples beliefs, causing them to be more willing to endorse belief in these things.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I think that in general as a result of being involved in this research I have become much more concerned about our educational responsibility to teach critical thinking skills ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... and our failure, actually, at doing a good job of that. I think that's one reason why belief in these sorts of things is so widespread, and so I have developed &amp;mdash; in the process actually of developing a course on critical thinking about mass media messages that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... I will teach here at Purdue in the coming years. I was naive. I guess that's the way to put it. I was naive about this.<br /> <br /> S: Well we all started off there, but what's interesting what I found counter-intuitive, but's been shown multiple times is that there's actually a positive correlation between the degree of education and belief in the paranormal. I think the reason for that, at least especially for American education, is that we're very good at teaching students to be open-minded, to think about new and fantastical ideas, and we certainly do not shy away from showing the uncertainty of knowledge and not to trust authority figures. Those are all good things, but unless you couple that, as you say, with hard-core tools for logic and skeptical thinking, critical thinking, it leads to &amp;mdash; more education actually leads to more belief in silly things like the paranormal.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually found in this one survey that we started off talking about, I actually found that education did have a negative association with belief in the paranormal, but it was not a very strong ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... negative association. When I say negative I mean higher education, lower belief.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: But that included all the way up through graduate degrees, post-graduate work and so forth.<br /> <br /> S: I was going to say that I think that that holds true through undergraduate training, ...<br /> <br /> GS: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: ... and you really have to get into the really post-graduate level before ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... basically by working scientist level ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... before the belief starts to fall off. And basically, what other surveys have shown, is that pretty much this same percentage of the population that is reasonably scientifically literate, is just about the same percentage of the population that work in the sciences. So outside of working scientists and associated professions, the rest of America are basically scientificly illiterate.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right, and I think I have some data that indicates essentially if you work within that group and rule out the practicing scientists, the post-graduate folks.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If you rule those people out, if you know the level of education that somebody has, it really doesn't tell you anything at all about the likelihood that they're going to endorse paranormal beliefs or not.<br /> <br /> E: That's certainly true in my own case. Whereas I didn't even realize there was a skeptical movement or have an appreciation for science and the scientific method until I was about twenty-five years old, a few years removed from my undergraduate work in college. I believed in everything right up through then. Only once I left the academic environment really did I discover the world of skepticism. I totally understand that this is the case, and probably not just Purdue students. I'll bet you that that's pretty much in line with universities all over the country.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure that's right.<br /> <br /> === Post-Modernism &lt;small&gt;(22:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, one of the beliefs that has been very popular within universities culture is ''post-modernism''. This is not just ignorance of science, this is not necessarily just a friendliness toward paranormal beliefs. Post-modernism is really sort of an intellectual, philosophical belief that science basically is bunk, that science is just another human narrative with no special relationship to the truth any more than art or history or any cultural belief system. Post-modernist beliefs are rampant through American universities and European universities. There's a lot of factors, not just the absence of critical thinking skills, there's actually cultural, historical factors that are working against us.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I certainly agree with that. In fact, that theme that you just mentioned there, post-modernism, has been a major theme in almost every department of communication ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... that of major departments in the country. And certainly has been a major theme in my own department.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It's really been a battle-ground you might say.<br /> <br /> S: You find yourself personally embattled with post-modernist philosophy in your university?<br /> <br /> GS: Historically, we have been here, yes. I'm happy to say that in the last five years the scientific side has really emerged.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: That has not been the case at other departments at other universities.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: It really is just a function of the particular people who come and go.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. Right. <br /> <br /> GS: We've been fortunate in my own department.<br /> <br /> E: It waxes and wanes depending?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. I think that's right.<br /> <br /> S: I think that there are vast disciplines and generations of people within the arts especially and humanities who really latched onto this idea. It's a bit self-serving, because it basically says that whatever they're doing within the humanities is just as valid as anything that scientists are doing. The scientists don't have anything on them.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: Unfortunately, I think it comes down to that to some degree just a little bit of professional jealousy, and why they've really endorsed it. Interestingly, within hard-core philosophy of science, it really has come and gone already. This is sort really a philosophy of the twentieth century, and the people who, or the discipline that really generated this idea, have already gone past it and given it up, but it hasn't really trickled down to the rest of academia, and certainly not to popular culture. The place that I find it most dishearteningly entrenched is in the education culture in this country. The people who are giving out education degrees &amp;mdash; totally infiltrated with post-modernism, and it's really disheartening. I don't know if you've personally encountered that at all.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I don't have a lot of close contact with the education folks, but I'm not surprised at that. I see this in my classes when I confront students with really just basic logic and ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... thinking about claims and the validity of claims. It's just startling to hear what they think and what they've been taught in other classrooms about the nature of science and the validity of scientific claims ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... as opposed to other sorts of claims. It really is like you say. I think it's not left us yet. It's still ...<br /> <br /> S: No, you think about it. What are all of the various components of our society which affect what our citizens know and believe? It's primary education, university education, and increasingly, the media. What we're basically saying is that post-modernists and philosophies which are amenable to belief in the paranormal pretty much hold sway throughout the education system. There isn't a complete lack or inadequacy of teaching of science and critical thinking in the education system, and in fact most people learn and acquire most of their beliefs through mass media, and there, there's really almost no skepticism.<br /> <br /> GS: I'd have to agree with that.<br /> <br /> S: So where does that leave us? That's why I think that what you're doing is so important, because the mass media, I think, is actually playing an increasing role as a source of knowledge and beliefs in our society. I think there's definitely room to teach the public how to be critical consumers of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: That's certainly one of the things I'm trying to do.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> === Trends in Television &lt;small&gt;(26:46)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: One of the surprising things about the pop culture media stuff is that it's been difficult to predict. I thought I few years ago that maybe we were starting to get away from this.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And now you come upon the current TV seasons, and you realize &quot;man, this stuff is just back with a vengenance.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it never really went away, but it just seems like it's more popular right now than it ever has been.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. I mean I think we discussed this briefly on last week's show. Basically, I think what happened was you had a couple of programs like &quot;Lost&quot; that were just very well written. They were just good entertaining shows. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are paranormal. The unimaginative TV executives decided to emulate this show, but rather than emulating its quality, they emulated its paranormal theme.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: So now we have a host of paranormal shows, but I don't think they're going to last very long. If you back just one year or two years, the most popular show is ''Crime Scene Investigations'', so of course there were twenty crime scene investigative shows.<br /> <br /> GS: The industry knows how to copy.<br /> <br /> S: Right. Right. I don't know that necessarily this is a paranormal phenomenon so much as just a TV executive copycat phenomenon.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that's right. I think that is the right take on it. You can really get speculative about why this is happening, and I really think the business practice is the best explanation for why we're seeing this stuff.<br /> <br /> S: Right. But it does bring up an interesting topic. At times, skeptics have been criticized by being essentially sticks-in-the-mud, because we have been critical of the way the paranormal is depicted within fiction. You've been talking about, again, documentaries and shows which pretend to be informational. But what about the presentation of the paranormal in fiction? As we said last week, the four of us acutally like science fiction and fantasy. We have no problem with it.<br /> <br /> GS: Right. <br /> <br /> S: But some skeptics have argued that the movies and television shows of our culture &amp;mdash; this is really the mythology of our society. This is the mythology of our culture, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. It shouldn't be dismissed because it is just a movie or just TV. And if the mythology is constantly celebrating credible or credulous belief in the paranormal, and the only role model of scientist is essentially the &quot;mad scientist,&quot; Frankenstein kind of model, that we're basically creating a reverence in our society for belief in the paranormal, and demonizing the scientists. Do you deal at all with that? with fiction or just the role of movies or fiction television programs on belief?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I actually have done one experiment with a fictional program. Maybe you'll remember it. It used to run on the USA network. It was called &quot;Beyond Reality.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: There were half-hour episodes, and think [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Belafonte Shari Belafonte] used to star in it. I did an experiment with one of their episodes on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection astral projection]. Based on that study, I guess I have some sympathy for the concern about these fictional programs. The study showed that exposure to that episode did make it easier for people to endorse their own personal beliefs in astral projection.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: I think that if you think about the cognitive processes as we understand it as people are processing this kind of media it kind of makes sense. There's the notion of the availability heuristic. As people spend time with these programs, and then they are asked to make a judgment about whether something is credible, they tend to draw upon the thing that is easiest to come to mind. Whether or not that is a fictional entertainment experience or whether it's something that is harder than that, if they've been spending time with that kind of idea, they don't really tend to make a clear distinction.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: They use that as a guideline in terms of coming to a belief about the possibility that this might actually exist. I think we're not necessarily saying here that people watch these programs and they end up coming away true believers. It just makes the belief more plausible.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: So the people are willing to express the possibility: &quot;Oh, yeah, that might happen.&quot; You know. I kind of have been exposed to that idea, and that might happen. And I think that's really where these fictional programs exert their effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. There's also I think a pretty well-documented literature looking at the role of fiction in paranormal beliefs in that for example the effect of science-fiction movies about aliens.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes<br /> <br /> S: And how what gets portrayed in these science fiction movies gets incorporated into the UFO mythology.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: The two sort of feed off of each other.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. No question about it. Down to the images that we carry in our heads about what aliens look like.<br /> <br /> S: Right. And what flying saucers are supposed to look like.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Right. <br /> <br /> S: And what the aliens are doing here, et cetera. <br /> <br /> GS: Yup.<br /> <br /> S: So, you're sort of endorsing the bottom line of what I'm saying here is that it's legitimate to be concerned about fiction and its impact on our culture, for no other reason if you're sparking the imagination of the youth to believe in these things, that's likely to have a profound impact on their life, as opposed to say in the immediate post-Sputnik era when America's youth were encouraged to imagine themselves as astronauts and scientists and et cetera, and that sparked real scientific revolution in this country, which some people argue led to the tech boom of the nineties, the internet, all the things that really took off twenty, thirty years later.<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Yes.<br /> <br /> S: So now we're going to have a paranormal boom twenty years from now, I guess? Because we're in the middle of that now.<br /> <br /> === The CSI Effect &lt;small&gt;(33:20)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> GS: We can see the same kind of effect in fact I think one of the major news magazines ran a story on it. You know the CSI effect?<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What that has done to jury members who come in to trials expecting as a result of their familiarity with that program, expecting that every jury trial is going to involve evidence of the sort ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... that convicts people on CSI.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And it's becoming an increasing problem in our jury system right now, because typically trials don't contain that kind of evidence.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And yet people are bringing their expectations based on a fictional program that represents things that could possibly happen, and they just make that transfer all too easily.<br /> <br /> P: That's very interesting. Glenn, have you looked at or what is your take on the glut of reality TV programming that we see today?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> P: You know, the reality television: Survivor and all that kind of stuff. There's so much of it nowadays.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. Again, I kind of look at that as really almost an accident of the practices in the industry. I go back to the writer's strike in the late 1980's when the television industry was really scrambling for programming that they could put on when they lost the writers, and they kind of turned to this reality genre. I think that's when a lot of the paranormal programming started, too, because they just kind of accidentally stumbled on this theme. They found that they could put people on TV who said they'd seen a UFO, and they got ratings with it. It was cheap to produce.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And it just kind of evolved after that. I think reality television really is sort of an outgrowth of that as well. It's much cheaper to produce. They found that because it has competition involved in it, and people tend to become involved with the characters, and they have to stay around to see what happens to the people they like and don't like, that the genre works. They've had to do some innovations to keep people interested in the formulas. I think that it's going to be around for awhile in one form or another. People predicted that it was going to die out, but I think the creativity in the industry to keep this basic genre coming under different scenarios is pretty potent. I don't underestimate the creativity of the TV executives.<br /> <br /> === Violence in the Media &lt;small&gt;(36:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So, Glenn, I want to change gears a little bit and get away from the paranormal, but talk about an issue which keeps cropping up over and over again. It's one of these issues where you get the feeling that political interests are manipulating the science to fit their needs. So maybe you can clear this up for us once and for all. The issue is violence in the media. The question that keeps cropping up is &quot;Does depictions of violence in the media make people violent?&quot; What do you think?<br /> <br /> GS: Well, there's a lot you have to say in order to answer that question in the appropriate scientific way. <br /> <br /> S: Go for it.<br /> <br /> GS: I guess what I would say is: first of all, yes, I am probably part of the consensus of the scientific community when I would say that there's no question that the experiments that have been done on this topic over the years, and we have many of them, now, tend to converge and support the notion that viewing media violence is associated with a greater likelihood to act aggressively. Now that's a very general ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... kind of statement. The way you have to qualify that statement is by saying first of all the statistical effect size is very small. It's a modest statistical effect.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm. True, but insignificant is what you would say.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I wouldn't say it's insignificant, but ...<br /> <br /> S: But small.<br /> <br /> GS: ... it's small. An interesting aspect of that is that a small statistical effect can sometimes be socially important.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: If only two people out of 500,000 people who view an act of media violence decide to go out an imitate it, you could still end up with arguably you might say a socially important effect.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: If that act of violence is murder.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: But it's still a small effect. That I think has to be emphasized. The other thing that we're finding here is that increasingly I think we're qualifying this effect by saying that there are certain kinds of individuals that are much more likely to be affected by these sorts of programs than others. I think the best research right now is going on in a medical context, which is showing that children, for example, who already have some psychological disturbance and if you look at adults that may already be high on the hostility subscale of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]. So people who already have sort of a predisposition to aggression, they maybe have a family background or a social pathology ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... which predisposes them to agression. Maybe they even have a chemical predisposition to agression. Those are the folks that are most at risk for the effects of media violence. In a case of a typical child who has a healthy family background and has a healthy peer group and so forth, we're not finding that the risk is tremendously great, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: So just a couple of clarifying questions. What you're saying is that there's a modest or small effect, not that there's a small effect across the board, but there's an effect on a small number of subjects, and the majority of people have no effect from watching violent programs. Is that a fair way to summarize that?<br /> <br /> GS: I don't know if I would go that far to say that the majority of people have no effect, but I would say that the strongest effects that we find increasingly now we're beginning to understand are more likely to be found among those people who already had this predisposition.<br /> <br /> S: But is that enough to explain the entire statistical effect, or is it ...<br /> <br /> GS: I think in many studies it may be, yes.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: In many studies it may be.<br /> <br /> S: The other clarifying question is: are you also saying that watching violent programming isn't making these people violent. It's not giving them a violent personality. It is simply triggering violent behavior in a pre-existing violent personality. Is that fair?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, that's right. A trigger is a very good term to use, I think. A lot of the theories actually that try to explain this phenomenon use a concept that's very much like that. That you have to have a person first of all &amp;mdash; to observe agression you have to have a person who has some preexisting frustation or anger.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And so if you don't have that, if a perfectly docile person watches media violence, it's not likely that they're going to be affected by that ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: ... in terms of going out and performing aggression. But if you have a person who is already frustrated, angry, and then they see violent events, it's much more likely that those events can then interact and trigger the agressive response.<br /> <br /> S: Might crystalize in their mind ...<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: ... an outlet for what they're feeling.<br /> <br /> P: Almost like propaganda it sounds like, to a degree.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Like the Nazi propaganda crystalizing frustation in Germany or undercurrent of hatred against Jews, something like that÷<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, I think it can work that way. It can work that way. One of the popular ideas that we know does not have much support is the notion that viewing violence can actually be therapeutic.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That idea was very popular for awhile under a hypothesis called the [http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095555741 <br /> ''Catharsis Hypothesis''].<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: That as it turns out really doesn't have much empirical support in the literature at all. I would say that that theoretical idea is dead.<br /> <br /> S: OK.<br /> <br /> GS: Even though the popular culture still sort of trots that out all the time.<br /> <br /> S: Although, honestly, I haven't heard that one myself.<br /> <br /> GS: That often makes it's appearance on talk shows.<br /> <br /> S: OK. Does the literature explore types of violence. For example, does cartoon violence have any effect, or does there have to be a certain amount of realism to the violence in order for it to have an effect?<br /> <br /> GS: Realistic violence in general is more likely to have an effect, although we do have studies with children that show that cartoons can also yield these same sort of imitative effects, particularly with young kids who have not maybe learned the distinction between reality and fantasy. Maybe children up to around the age of six or seven, even cartoon violence can have the same sorts of effects.<br /> <br /> S: Because it's real to them.<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah. That's right.<br /> <br /> S: But in adults, either it hasn't been studied. Does the effect of cartoon violence drop off with age?<br /> <br /> GS: Yes. Again, there's not a lot of research today ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... on some of the adult cartoons, but ...<br /> <br /> S: Like &quot;The Simpsons&quot; or something?<br /> <br /> GS: So there are still some open questions there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> P: On a related line, when I read an article of yours that you published back in April, called ''Don't Bank On Violence In Summer Blockbusters To Fill Theaters.'' I thought that was a very interesting piece, and one of the things I took from it, which something I always believed, was that people like violence in movies because they get afraid, and it's the fear, the adrenaline of the fear, that is alluring. But I believe in your piece it says that's not exactly the case.<br /> <br /> GS: Well, I have devoted some attention to this topic of the enjoyment of violence, and why people like it, and whether or not it's really as popular or appealing to people as the industry seems to think that it might be. Basically, what I'm finding so far is that violence itself may not be adding all that much to the enjoyment of the entertainment experience. In my most recent study, which actually will be published in hard-copy in December in the journal ''Communications Reports'', it's out already I think in the online version, we actually took a film, a popular film, ''The Fugitive'', and we cut out fifteen minutes of violence, which was in that case almost all the violence in the movie. We randomly assigned people to watch one of the two versions, either the edited or the unedited version, and we made sure that people weren't familiar with it so they didn't recognize what had been done to the film. What we found was people enjoyed the edited version as much as the original version with the violence.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Taking the violence out didn't make any difference. And that's consistent the few other studies in the literature that have been done using that same sort of strategy. We also find that if you look at the relationship between box office gross of motion pictures over the last five years, and independent ratings of say an online organization that rates films in terms of violent content, you don't find any relationship between how much money a film is making and the level of violent content in the film. So, the evidence seems to suggest that people are not necessarily enjoying violence for its own sake.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: Now what they may enjoy is they may enjoy other things that are correlated incidentally with violence. So violent films may also contain more sexuality, or they may also contain ...<br /> <br /> S: More action.<br /> <br /> GS: ... more action or more excitement, exactly. And so people may be deriving some gratification from those things. In the case of fear, it is true that they may be getting an arousal effect from being scared, and maybe just the fact that the movie ends after the action, and people walk away from the theater with a profound sense of relief, they may end up remembering those films as ones that they really enjoyed, because the arousal from the fright sort of transfers to the feeling of relief, which is a positive thing at the end. And so people may go away from these films and think &quot;Man, that was really great!&quot; But actually while they were viewing the film, that's not what they were thinking ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: And that's not how they were feeling.<br /> <br /> === The Roller Coaster Effect &lt;small&gt; (47:20) &lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> B: Would that also apply to something like an amusement park ride?<br /> <br /> GS: Exactly. I call it the roller coaster effect. It's really the same thing. People may not &amp;mdash; when somebody is up on the top rail looking over contemplating that they might fall off, that's not fun. That really is a negative emotion. But when the ride is over, all that adrenaline is transferred to the end of the ride, and you get off, and you're relieved, and particularly you can say &quot;I made it. I did it!&quot; Now you can brag about this, and all that positive feeling is intensified by the arousal that's still in your system. So it's what we call the ''excitation transfer effect''. The arousal's transferring to the new emotion.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And we don't separate the arousal very well. We don't attribute the arousal &quot;Oh, that's left over from before.&quot; It's just feeds into the next emotion.<br /> <br /> B: That reminds me of an amusement park saying about a lot of their roller-coaster-type rides. Basically it says &quot;Fear minus death equals fun.&quot;<br /> <br /> (laughter)<br /> <br /> GS: That's a very good summary of it.<br /> <br /> B: And it's true. I love all those rides. The crazier and scarier the better. But I wonder: how do you actually test that? Can you somehow induce an adrenaline rush without fear, and then kind of see the effects of that so you kind of teasing apart the adrenaline after effects and the fear. Because I don't know, I think fear is &amp;mdash; maybe it's hard to distinguish, but I think fear is fun. I've gone sky-diving, scuba diving, and I've done lot's of crazy stuff like that, and it's exhilarating.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. How do you separate the physiological from the psychological effects of fear, I guess?<br /> <br /> GS: Well. Actually on this theory of excitation transfer, you can show first of all that &amp;mdash; we actually measure physiological arousal, first of all. So we have a person's self-report of their emotion, and we can get a gauge of their self-reported intensity for what they're feeling. And then we can also look at their physiological arousal.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: What's been done in this theory is we are able to show that the intensity of a subsequent emotion that follows maybe a media-induces emotion like fear or ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... anger, or whatever, the intensity of the subsequently induced emotion in another situation is a direct function of how much arousal they had while they were watching the film.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Not only that, but we can also show then that if we substitute in another arousing source other than a media exposure, so we have them jog around the track, and then we expose them to the same new emotion. It's the same thing. As a function of how aroused they got when they jogged, they respond with the same emotional intensity as the people who responded after they watched the film. So it's really &amp;mdash; there's really very good evidence that the emotional intensity that people experience is a function of the arousal that ...<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: ... came before. And it doesn't matter whether it came from a negative emotion or a positive emotion. It's just arousal. Arousal is arousal is arousal. It's not (unintelligible).<br /> <br /> S: Interesting. Of course for the point view of movie producers, they don't really care about all this. All they really care about is what people feel like when they walk out of the theater.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: If they walk out of the theater thinking that the movie was great and that produces a positive buzz about the movie, more people will see it. It doesn't matter if they were miserable for two hours, as long as when they come out they're happy.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. In fact, there's a testable hypothesis here to my knowledge hasn't been tested yet in the literature. For awhile in the scary film genre it was sort of popular to have an unresolved ending where the threat is really kind of still lurking out there.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: You end up coming out of the film still with a feeling of uneasiness. It really isn't &amp;mdash; the tension hasn't been relieved for you. I would predict, based on this theory, that all other things being equal, people who see a film like that are less likely to report that they enjoyed the experience and would want to go back to another one of these kinds of movies.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: As opposed to a person who had been able to go through the full relief sort of syndrome.<br /> <br /> S: You need an alternate ending study.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Two ending to the same movie to see how that affects. Interesting. <br /> <br /> === The Internet as Media &lt;small&gt;(52:12)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: So we are running a little short on time, but let me turn to one last topic. Of course if you're out there listening to this podcast, the Skeptics' Guide, then you have a computer, you are probably somewhat internet savvy. A lot of the research you've done is on television, but it certainly seems to me that television is merging with the internet. So have you begun to look at the internet and the world-wide web as a mass media outlet and its effects on belief or information? Is that happening in the literature, your personal research, or in others?<br /> <br /> GS: Yeah, generally speaking you're right on target. This is where the cutting edge is right now in communication research. I serve on a number of editorial boards, and I would say right now, Oh wow, I would say maybe seventy to eighty percent of the articles that I'm reviewing right now have to do with new technology.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: In terms of marrying that with this topic of the paranormal, I have not personally yet done that, although clearly that's there to be done.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And I haven't seen any other articles on that general topic. There's no question that the world-wide web now is a very important source of information, and if you go exploring on this topic of the paranormal, you are exposed to all kinds of information.<br /> <br /> S: Believe me, we know.<br /> <br /> GS: I'm sure you do. So clearly this is a very important topic, I think, ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> GS: ... for the future, and one that we'll no doubt study.<br /> <br /> S: Anything surprising or different in the literature on the internet or the web that distinguishes it from other forms of mass media.<br /> <br /> GS: I really think that interactivity, just the personal involvement, I think many scholars feel that the cause of the level of involvement that people have with the web, that the effects of the content might tend to be more pronounced.<br /> <br /> S: Hm, hm.<br /> <br /> GS: Although we've had a difficult time I think so far really saying that for certain. The number of studies that we have that are really well-designed &amp;mdash; as with any new medium it takes awhile to develop an experimental paradigm that works, and I think a lot of researchers are still sort of feeling their way through the internet and trying to get a paradigm.<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I's hard to say whether or not that's true. That is certainly a theoretical concept that would appear to have merit.<br /> <br /> S: So that's another variable that you could manipulate in your own research: the degree to which the content is interactive.<br /> <br /> GS: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And how does that affect belief?<br /> <br /> GS: That's right. Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Something you think you'll do?<br /> <br /> GS: I'm getting to the point in my career now where I'm realizing that the number of studies that I can do are limited, and so ...<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: I'm having to really prioritize. But that's on the list. There is some internet research that's out there on the list. That's probably one of them.<br /> <br /> === Belgium Adolescents Study &lt;small&gt;(55:26)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> <br /> S: Is there anything you're working on right now?<br /> <br /> GS: I am gearing up right now for a large-scale survey of Belgium adolescents, that I'm going to do. I'm going to be going to Belgium in the spring and hopefully doing a comparitive study with US adolescents, not only in terms of media exposure and belief in the paranormal, because a lot of the programs in Belgium are the same as the ones that we see here, but I'm also interested in carrying this now into the area of beliefs about basic scientific phenomena. I think the flip side of paranormal beliefs is what do people believe about science?<br /> <br /> S: Right. <br /> <br /> GS: And what is their understanding about scientific knowledge. And I really haven't done a whole lot in that area, yet, and I really would like to. <br /> <br /> S: Why Belgium?<br /> <br /> B: I think you'll be equally amazed.<br /> <br /> GS: Just an accident. Purdue has a &amp;mdash; we're in the process of formalizing a relationship with the University in <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuven Leuven],<br /> and I just came back from Belgium, in fact, and we are planning a sort of an exchange program there, and it turns out they've got a very vibrant media studies unit and large-scale surveys planned, and we're going to be collaborating with them. It's really just an opportunity that fell into my lap, you might say.<br /> <br /> S: Sounds good. Well, Glenn, we are out of time. Thank you so much for being on the Skeptics' Guide. Again, this is been Professor Sparks, a professor of communication at Purdue University telling us about mass media and belief in the paranormal and all sorts of other topics. Thanks for being on the Skeptics' Guide.<br /> <br /> GS: I really enjoyed it. Thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> S: Hope to have you on again. Perry, Bob, Evan: thanks again for joining me.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Good night.<br /> <br /> P: Next week.<br /> <br /> S: Until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a production of the New England Skeptical Society. For more information on this and other episodes see our website at www.theness.com.<br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *Resonance effect: Having a paranormal experience, then seeing something paranormal on TV increases likelihood of belief.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Cultivation_theory#Key_terms_in_cultivation_analysis|Resonance effect}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *A scientist publicly criticizing a paranormal belief increases the belief's credibility in the public. <br /> *Editing the violence out of a violent movie does no harm to peoples' enjoyment of the movie&lt;ref&gt;[http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sparks/Appeal%20of%20Violence.pdf Study on enjoyment of violence in movies (PDF)]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Glenn Sparks (16) --&gt;<br /> |Live Recording = <br /> |Interview = <br /> |Randi Speaks = <br /> |Skeptical Puzzle = <br /> |Amendments = <br /> |Alternative Medicine = <br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = <br /> |Cons, Scams &amp; Hoaxes = <br /> |Conspiracy Theories = <br /> |Creationism &amp; ID = <br /> |Cryptozoology = <br /> |Energy Healing = <br /> |Entertainment = y &lt;!-- Trends in television (16) --&gt;<br /> |ESP = <br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Widespread belief in the paranormal (16) [Survey results]--&gt;<br /> |Ghosts &amp; Demons = <br /> |History = <br /> |Homeopathy = <br /> |Humor = <br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y &lt;!-- The CSI effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |Logic &amp; Philosophy = y &lt;!-- Post-modernism (16) --&gt;<br /> |Myths &amp; Misconceptions = <br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = <br /> |Neuroscience &amp; Psychology = y &lt;!-- Media and belief in the paranormal (16) Dramatic recreations (16) Television watching culture (16) Violence in the media (16) The roller coaster effect (16) --&gt;<br /> |New Age = <br /> |Paranormal = <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = <br /> |Politics = <br /> |Prophecy = <br /> |Pseudoscience = <br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = <br /> |Science &amp; Education = <br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = <br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- The internet as media (16) --&gt;<br /> |SGU = <br /> |Technology = <br /> |UFOs &amp; Aliens = <br /> |Other = <br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9590 2015-01-18T18:41:50Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories (23:24) */ Removed reference to conspiracy tweet.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent|cromulent}}<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of {{w|Primal therapy}}, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lennon}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxophone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? ({{w|Yakety Sax}} starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the song {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at wtn@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> E: Ya, Marge.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randy Garner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And, by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persuasive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutesy cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bodies could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3012532 Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Joliot-Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist and won a Nobel prize in chemistry.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9589 2015-01-18T18:40:08Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Today I Learned... */ Marie Curie&#039;s daughter also won a Nobel prize.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent|cromulent}}<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of {{w|Primal therapy}}, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lennon}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxophone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? ({{w|Yakety Sax}} starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the song {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at wtn@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> E: Ya, Marge.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randy Garner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And, by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persuasive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutesy cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bodies could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3012532 Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Joliot-Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist and won a Nobel prize in chemistry.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9588 2015-01-18T18:36:47Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Announcements (1:19:37) */ Fixed link to Annedroids.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent|cromulent}}<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of {{w|Primal therapy}}, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lennon}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxophone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? ({{w|Yakety Sax}} starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the song {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at wtn@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> E: Ya, Marge.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randy Garner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And, by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persuasive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutesy cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bodies could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3012532 Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9587 2015-01-18T18:25:16Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Science or Fiction (1:04:38) */ Minor corrections</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent|cromulent}}<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of {{w|Primal therapy}}, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lennon}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxophone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? ({{w|Yakety Sax}} starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the song {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at wtn@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> E: Ya, Marge.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randy Garner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And, by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persuasive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutesy cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bodies could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9586 2015-01-18T16:47:54Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Humor in Science (55:32) */ Corrected spelling</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent|cromulent}}<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of {{w|Primal therapy}}, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lennon}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxophone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? ({{w|Yakety Sax}} starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the song {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at wtn@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> E: Ya, Marge.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randy Garner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And, by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persuasive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutesy cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9585 2015-01-18T16:29:19Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Who&#039;s That Noisy? (51:46) */ Added links, spelling corrections</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent|cromulent}}<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of {{w|Primal therapy}}, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lennon}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxophone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? ({{w|Yakety Sax}} starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the song {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at wtn@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener,&quot; and so forth, &quot;I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randi Gardner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persusive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutsey cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9584 2015-01-18T16:27:08Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Who&#039;s That Noisy? (51:46) */ Added links, spelling corrections</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent|cromulent}}<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of {{w|Primal therapy}}, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lennon}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxophone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? ({{Yakety Sax}} starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the song {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at wtn@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener,&quot; and so forth, &quot;I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randi Gardner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persusive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutsey cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9583 2015-01-18T16:09:36Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Pits on the Moon (45:00) */ Spelling corrections</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorithms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare lunar maria], which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with, at least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hence the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometeorite micrometeorites] ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very cromulent<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of primal therapy, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lenin}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxaphone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? (Funny saxophone music starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the Eye of the Tiger song)<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at WTN@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener,&quot; and so forth, &quot;I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randi Gardner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persusive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutsey cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9579 2015-01-18T06:40:35Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Ken Ham Denies Aliens (34:10) */ various minor corrections.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Makes sense.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that, if aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The version I have anyway.<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospel. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish. It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. Is that a bible quote?<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcissistic he is ...<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: ... in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put it into context though.<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroach would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! That's a good one.<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode (Rebecca holds back a laugh) where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorythms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the lunar maria, which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with. At least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hense the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by {{w|micrometeorite}} ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very cromulent<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of primal therapy, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lenin}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxaphone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? (Funny saxophone music starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the Eye of the Tiger song)<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at WTN@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener,&quot; and so forth, &quot;I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randi Gardner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persusive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutsey cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9578 2015-01-18T06:23:46Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories (23:24) */ minor corrections.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B My stuff's not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia Airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia Airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine Ukraine], and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickel down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USD END. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot;&lt;ref&gt;dave rocki twitter feed&lt;/ref&gt; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect passports recovered with no damage with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from ''Above Top Secret'' stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> <br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> <br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> <br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> <br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> <br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> <br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favorite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that. If aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The verse of (inaudible)<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospels. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. (Inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcisistic he is,<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroch would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! Thats ...<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless ... we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorythms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the lunar maria, which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with. At least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hense the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by {{w|micrometeorite}} ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very cromulent<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of primal therapy, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lenin}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxaphone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? (Funny saxophone music starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the Eye of the Tiger song)<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at WTN@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener,&quot; and so forth, &quot;I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randi Gardner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persusive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutsey cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9577 2015-01-18T06:00:51Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Mike Adams and Monsanto (14:02) */ minor corrections.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to [http://theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense theskepticsguide.org/legaldefense] <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia paranoid schizophrenia], and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. &quot;It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that spells it out.<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve, to be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, big swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: [[Wink Martindale]]!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B (Inaudible)&lt;! Night's?&gt; still not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the Ukraine, and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickle down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USDEND. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect, &quot;Passports recovered with no damage,&quot; with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from &quot;Above Top Secret&quot; stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favourite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that. If aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The verse of (inaudible)<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospels. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. (Inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcisistic he is,<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroch would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! Thats ...<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless ... we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorythms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the lunar maria, which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with. At least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hense the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by {{w|micrometeorite}} ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very cromulent<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of primal therapy, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lenin}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxaphone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? (Funny saxophone music starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the Eye of the Tiger song)<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at WTN@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener,&quot; and so forth, &quot;I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randi Gardner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persusive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutsey cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_472&diff=9576 2015-01-18T05:14:14Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Introduction */ Minor corrections, undid text I inadvertently added from another episode.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y<br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox <br /> |episodeNum = 472<br /> |episodeDate = 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Jul 2014<br /> |episodeIcon = File:LunarPits2.jpg<br /> |bob = y<br /> |jay = y<br /> |evan = y<br /> |rebecca = y<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-07-26.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=44221.0<br /> |qowText = Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, July 24th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson,<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella,<br /> <br /> J: Hey, guys.<br /> <br /> S: and Evan Bernstein.<br /> <br /> E: Ooh! It's good to be back! How's everyone doing?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, it's been a while.<br /> <br /> B: Good! Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: We've all been on the road, so many places ...<br /> <br /> J: On the go!<br /> <br /> R: Apparently, both Jay and I got sick for the trouble.<br /> <br /> S: I was a little sick too.<br /> <br /> R: Hmm ...<br /> <br /> B: I would <br /> <br /> S: It's hard to shake hands with a thousand people and not pick something up.<br /> <br /> J: Yep.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Come on, skeptics; wash your hands, please.<br /> <br /> J: I was talkin' to someone at work, and we were both thinking that maybe it's just airline travel. You can't get away from germs in the plane, you know?<br /> <br /> R: I think it's all of that. {{w|Convention (meeting)|Cons}}, you've got people from all over, some with not the most sanitary habits. (Rogues laugh) Admittedly, you know ... not everybody washes their hands, and you're all crowded into one spot; and yeah, it's the same with the airplane, with the recycled air. And then, also, with me at least, cons means staying up all night, usually having too much to drink, or something like that. Just overdoing it, stressing yourself out to the limit.<br /> <br /> E: Someone buys you a drink, they put their hand on the drink, you don't know where it's been, all that good stuff.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! What?<br /> <br /> E: Right! Touched the edge of the glass! It's all over!<br /> <br /> S: They licked the rim of the glass ...<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> R: I was picturing somebody just sticking their hand inside your beer or something.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:40)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> July 26, 1895<br /> Pierre and Marie Curie Married<br /> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_Marie_Curie_and_Pierre_Curie_get_married <br /> <br /> R: Hey, happy anniversary ...<br /> <br /> B: Thank you!<br /> <br /> R: ... to the Curies.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> R: Are you Pierre, or Marie, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: I'm Marie, of course!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, good choice.<br /> <br /> B: She was cooler!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, in 1895, {{w|Pierre Curie}}, and {{w|Marie Curie|Marie Skłodowska}} got hitched in France. A team was formed. They of course, went on to win a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Two years after they got married, they had a daughter, {{w|Irene Joliot Curie|Irene}}, who married {{w|Frederic Joliot-Curie|Frederic Joliot}} – I think that's how you say it. I don't know. And then they together won a Nobel Prize too!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's pretty amazing.<br /> <br /> R: Can you believe it?<br /> <br /> J: What was their prize?<br /> <br /> R: Also in Chemistry, wasn't it?<br /> <br /> S: Her real first name was what?<br /> <br /> E: Marya?<br /> <br /> R: Oh,<br /> <br /> S: Marya, yeah, Marya.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not Marie. She ...<br /> <br /> B: Like the Moon?<br /> <br /> S: She Frenchified it.<br /> <br /> E: No, &quot;e,&quot; it's a &quot;y&quot; in there.<br /> <br /> S: Mary &quot;A&quot;<br /> <br /> E: If you want to view her original documents and notes and stuff, it's protected in a lead box, and you have to get all into a suit, and put on protective clothes if you want to examine the original documents. They're so-o-o contaminated with radiation&lt;ref&gt;[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/mariecurie/p/marie_curie.htm Marie Curie's Radioactive Notes]&lt;/ref&gt; ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god! Wow!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Cool.<br /> <br /> B: That sucks.<br /> <br /> E: Well, not cool, but, you know. Interesting.<br /> <br /> R: Well, it's slightly tragic. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's unfortunate.<br /> <br /> S: It's like, almost inevitable that whoever really discovered radioactive elements, or radioactivity would have died from it before we learned how dangerous that it was. Someone had to take that hit for the team.<br /> <br /> R: But hey! At least they died together.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: They did!<br /> <br /> R: Actually, I don't know how closely they ...<br /> <br /> J: Now that you say that, I have to believe that's what happened.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, they got married, they won the Nobel Prize together, and then they died from radioactivity ...<br /> <br /> E: Radiation poisoning.<br /> <br /> S: A love story for the ages.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> E: It started like {{w|Romeo and Juliet}}, but ended in tragedy.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. Marie Curie is also famous for being the only female scientist that most people can name.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> R: Which is sad, because, again, she had a daughter who also won a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, you should be able to mention Irene.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === SGU Gets Sued &lt;small&gt;(4:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-lawsuit-to-suppress-legitimate-criticism-this-time-sbm/ <br /> <br /> S: Well, we have some interesting news items to go through today. So, I guess it was inevitable,<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: that I would get sued.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh nervously)<br /> <br /> J: Well, not just you, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, not just me. So, [http://www.sfsbm.org/ The Society for Science-Based Medicine], [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ SGU Productions], me individually, and just for good measure, {{w|Yale University}} were all sued by {{w|Edward Tobinick|Dr. Edward Tobinick}} for an article I wrote on [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine Science-based Medicine] over a year ago in which I was somewhat critical of Dr. Tobinick's practice.<br /> <br /> B: Ooh!<br /> <br /> E: How dare you!<br /> <br /> S: So, the quick skinny on this, guys, that he is a {{w|Dermatology|dermatologist}} and an internist, but he decided to specialize in neurology without ever getting any formal training or being board certified. So, he set up The [http://www.nrimed.com/ Institute for Neurological Recovery] – not to be suggestive at all. And he's using an off-label drug, Enbrel, {{w|etanercept}}, to treat a variety of things, including Alzheimer's disease, strokes, traumatic brain injury, and back pain due to disk disease. How could one drug treat so many things, you might be asking.<br /> <br /> R: It can't? It does not?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it probably can't! So, there's no double-blind placebo controlled trials looking at Enbrel for Alzheimer's disease or stroke or traumatic brain injury. He's claiming that these diseases are all caused by inflamation; and he has videos online showing people, within minutes, recovering from their stroke after getting the perispinal injection of Enbrel, which is highly implausible.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, isn't that a red flag of these pseudoscientists who have ... there's one cause of the disease, right, for everything. That's a sure red flag, I'm (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> S: I mean, there's red flags all over the place, which is what my original article was about. Just, look at all the red flags, you know. Yeah, one drug for many things, such rapid recovery; guy's not even a specialist with proper training, and he thinks he's revolutionized – {{w|paradigm shift}} – in the treatment of all these various things. He's really hard-selling his services with these videos. He's targetting a fairly desperate population with unmet needs. All the red flags are there. I'm also not the first person he's sued over this.<br /> <br /> Tobinick was also the target of a {{w|Medical Board of California}} accusation against him. The Board essentially concluded that he promoted and advertised off-label use of an FDA-approved drug, claiming breakthroughs and innovation, that what he was doing was, constituted unprofessional conduct under the California Business and Professional code.<br /> <br /> R: Did he sue them?<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) No. He actually had to agree to serve a one year on probation, during which time he was required to complete courses in ethics and prescribing practices. Basically, a slap on the wrist. Then he opened up a clinic in Florida, which I pointed out is a very friendly state to physicians who practice, let's say, non-traditional medicine.<br /> <br /> Clearly, what this represents is just his use of legal thuggery to try to silence criticism. That's what he's trying to do. I've written a thousand of these articles dissecting dubious claims that go way beyond the evidence. If you read his reviews on {{w|Yelp}}, there are patients who claim that he will charge ... first of all, he invites them in for a free consultation. But the consultation isn't with a physician. It's basically with somebody who works for him. It's almost like just a sales rep.<br /> <br /> Then, of course, you have to pay to see the physician, and he charges something like $4000 for a treatment.<br /> <br /> E: Whoa!<br /> <br /> B: Wow.<br /> <br /> S: What triggered my blog post about him on Science-based Medicine was an article in the {{w|Los Angeles Times|L.A. Times}} which discusses his – one particular case; there was a woman with Alzheimer's disease, and he gave her 165 injections over four years for a total cost of $132,000 at least. I mean, that's just calculating out what they said he was charging.<br /> <br /> And she continued to progress, really without any apparent change in the course of the illness, and died four years later in 2011. So, you know, that's pretty disgusting, sucking $132,000 out of a desperate husband who's treating his wife for Alzheimer's disease.<br /> <br /> The lawsuit is underway, and, you know, it's a pain in the ass. What can I say? But we're gonna fight it. I mean, the thing is, we had this conversation. It wasn't much of a conversation, but we had to decide ... we could have taken the easy way out and just removed the post from Science-based Medicine, but I felt very strongly that if we did that, we basically would be baring our throats to every charlatan out there who we've ever criticized, or are going to criticize in the future. Yeah, so we just couldn't do that.<br /> <br /> So, even though we knew that this was going to be a risky and expensive endeavor, I see we have no choice but to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> R: Well, geez, Steve, do you think that it's okay that we talk about this guy here on SGU now? Just kidding, this guy!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we announced this week, this is where we went public with the fact that we're being sued. I wrote a blog post about it on Science-based Medicine, and on [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/ Neurologica]. [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/ Orac] wrote about it on [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence]. And the story's now spreading through the Skeptical interwebs.<br /> <br /> And part of, obviously, the calculus of deciding that we need to fight this tooth and nail, is knowing that the skeptical community has a history of supporting our own members who are targeted by lawsuits. You remember {{w|Simon Singh}}, who was sued; and {{w|Paul Offit}} was sued; and {{w|Ben Goldacre}} was sued; so, you know.<br /> <br /> R: We're in good company.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, when these things happen, we just have to ... we have to fight as hard as we can.<br /> <br /> J: But, the lawsuit though, Steve, it sets a very good precedent. We're letting people know that you can't sue someone out of freedom of speech, and freedom of information.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And most importantly, like Steve said before, fighting this guy all the way to the very end puts a message out there that this is what we're gonna do if you try to silence us. We're not spreading misinformation, or misleading information, or things that we know to not be true. We are actually stating what science says.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's my professional opinion about what the current state of the science is, and this guy's practice. So, that's perfectly legitimate public discussion and opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Steve, is he suing you because he believes that your post is some kind of advertisment?<br /> <br /> S: Well, I wouldn't make any statements about what he believes. Let me just say that the legal strategy they're taking is to file under what's called the {{w|Lanham Act}}, which means that they're essentially claiming that my blog post was an advertisment for my Neurology practice at Yale, and therefore constitutes unfair competition because I was unfairly criticizing this competitor from many states away, who Yale didn't even know existed until this lawsuit happened.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, this is so slimy and so snakey, and so, ugh, god!<br /> <br /> J: Also, in the science community, everybody takes heat, right? Part of the scientific process is to publish in a peer review, which he's not doing, number 1. <br /> <br /> S: Well, he's publishing studies; he's just not publishing double-blind placebo-controlled trials. He's doing like what {{w|Burzynski Clinic|Stanislaw Burzynski}} is doing. &quot;Oh, here's some case reports and case series and review articles and opinion pieces, but not the kind of data that would actually show if his treatments actually work or not. Because, in my opinion, it's all placebo effects. It's like the cheer-leader effect.<br /> <br /> And it's remarkably similar, by the way, to another Florida clinic that I criticized years ago, {{w|William Hammesfahr}}, who was also treating patients years after they had a stroke with drugs, claiming that they could instantly reverse the symptoms of stroke. It's the same deal, you know what I mean? Remarkably similar population that's being targetted, claims that are being made, implausibility, huge amounts of cash on the barrel. In this case, insurance does not appear to be covering these treatments. Why should they?<br /> <br /> Yeah, we'll keep you updated as the case proceeds. It's unfortunately going to be expensive. Even if we get out by the shortest possible legal route, it's gonna be tens of thousands of dollars. But we are getting lots of offers of support. So hopefully we'll try to use what support we have to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. But even a frivolous case, it's tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from a frivolous case.<br /> <br /> J: What a waste of time and money too, the amount of time that Steve and I have been directing towards this, just dealing with the paperwork, and dealing with what's next, and talking to the lawyer, and all that stuff; it's hours and hours and hours, and it's draining!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It's a big deal, and we haven't even gone to trial yet!<br /> <br /> S: Well, hopefully it never will. The goal is for it to get dismissed at some point along the line. We don't want it to get to trial, but ... I think the guy doesn't have a case. The fact that he's going the advertisment route, and ... there are lots of signs that this is a desperate case. I suspect he was hoping to intimidate me into pulling the article ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, absolutely! <br /> <br /> S: I mean, I think that he's gonna go the distance, but I think he was hoping that I would just cave at some point. But, that's not gonna happen Dr. Tobinick. We're gonna fight this to the end.<br /> <br /> J: Many people have emailed us asking where they can help support this effort. So you can go to theskepticsguide.org/legaldefence <br /> <br /> === Mike Adams and Monsanto &lt;small&gt;(14:02)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mike-adams-is-a-dangerous-loon/<br /> <br /> S: So, another thing cropped up today, that I have to mention. You guys know our friend, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger from {{w|NaturalNews}}. This guy is a dangerous douchebag, and I mean that sincerely. So, his latest rant is this long, paranoid screed basically accusing anyone who is not anti-GMO of being a Nazi sympathizer. And I'm not exaggerating!<br /> <br /> B: (Chuckles) The Nazi card!<br /> <br /> S: He plays the Nazi card – it's a {{w|Godwin's law|Godwin}} from beginning to end. Full of Nazi references, saying that people who are defending {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMO}} are like the collaborators with the Nazis; and the Nazi's killing people and using science to defend ...<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hyperbole}} much?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, it's just incredible, the hyperbole. Yeah, it's incredible. He doesn't have a lick of evidence. There's not a link ...<br /> <br /> E: Never has!<br /> <br /> S: ... to anything. It's just him pulling crap out of his ass, just making stuff up, and just literally claiming that anyone who defends GMOs is a paid {{w|Monsanto}} shill. He says it matter-of-factly that Monsanto hired these people to lie for them, and basically they are taking money from Monsanto and lying in order to poison and kill millions of people.<br /> <br /> E: Here, I'll play Devil's Advocate. How about this?<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Mike Adams has a serious mental condition that he cannot help himself from acting this way. What do you think about that?<br /> <br /> S: I don't want to speculate about peoples' mental conditions, because ...<br /> <br /> E: I do.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, <br /> <br /> E: No, really. I mean, there's a sense of not ... of total detachment from reality from this guy, to the point where, his website ...<br /> <br /> S: That is a possible explanation.<br /> <br /> E: and everything ... and this is about as nice as you can be about this guy, I think. And give him this benefit of the doubt.<br /> <br /> R: Well, the things he's saying sound like things that could be grabbed a hold of by people with severe delusions like paranoid schitzophrenia, and they could act on those delusions, which makes it quite scary, actually.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Definitely.<br /> <br /> S: He says, this is the money quote. In bold – he bolds this – talking again about Nazi sympathizers. It is the moral right, and even the obligation of human beings everywhere to actively plan and carry out the killing of those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Okay, yeah, so that's (Inaudible)<br /> <br /> B: Whoa-a-a-a!<br /> <br /> S: He's trying to incite any loser who believes what he says into hunting down and killing people who are not anti-GMO.<br /> <br /> J: Well, he updated his blog, Steve. To be very clear, and he said, &quot;those are the paraphrased words of the German government, not my statement.&quot; <br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But that wasn't the original way that he published it, number 1. And number 2, you can't quote someone; the quote completely agrees with his sentiment; everything about this blog agrees with this sentiment; but then say, &quot;I'm not actually saying that because ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Wink wink, nod nod. It's bullshit.<br /> <br /> J: Gimme a break.<br /> <br /> S: I know! And then he goes on from there basically inciting a witch hunt. &quot;We have to hunt down these people, we have to expose them, we have to put their names and photos and addresses on the website so everybody knows who they are.&quot; Come on! And then he quotes, &quot;And by the way, you have a moral obligation to kill them! Those aren't my words though! I'm just quoting the German government!&quot;<br /> <br /> And then, at the beginning of the article, he links to somebody who's done just that! Monsantocollaborators.org is a website that apparently somebody else has made, that has a nice, bug swastika on it, and the word &quot;Monsanto.&quot; And then on the right side, it's all about how Monsanto has caused 270,000 suicides in India, which is a myth.<br /> <br /> R: It's not true.<br /> <br /> S: Total BS. It's not true. And on the left are journalists, publishers, and scientists who are Monsanto collaborators. And guess who's on the list?<br /> <br /> E: {{w|David Gorski}}?<br /> <br /> B: (Inaudible) Martindale!<br /> <br /> S: David Gorski's on the list, he made the list.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|John Stossel|John Stossel's}} on ...<br /> <br /> S: John Stossel's on the list.<br /> <br /> J: Wait! Wait! It says, underr David Gorski's name, &quot;Key perpetrator of the poisoning of hundreds of millions of children with GMO's and vaccines.&quot; Do they not even know who they ... did they ever talk to Dave? Did they ever meet Dave? Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Hundreds of millions?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, he has killed hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: But, Jay, I'm sure you didn't miss the fact that &lt;I&gt;I'm&lt;/I&gt; on the list as well.<br /> <br /> B: Ya-a-a-ay!<br /> <br /> E: (Gasps) No way!<br /> <br /> S: And under me, it says, <br /> <br /> R: Lucky you.<br /> <br /> S: I know, it is a badge of honor, but I'm a little disturbed by the fact that he's actually telling people to kill me.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: &quot;Another corporate science shill who attacks the {{w|Séralini affair|Seralini study}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you're a shill, and ...<br /> <br /> S: I'm a shill, who gets paid nothing.<br /> <br /> J: And you're Randi's what? What did he say?<br /> <br /> S: Crony. I'm Randi's crony.<br /> <br /> J: You're a crony. So a shill and a crony.<br /> <br /> B: You're a shrony!<br /> <br /> (Laughter and cross-talk)<br /> <br /> E: And therefore you deserve to be wiped out.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, maybe one day you'll be as bad-ass as David Gorski, and it'll say under your name, &quot;Killed hundreds of millions of children!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Hundreds of millions of children.<br /> <br /> R: He's not even a {{w|Pediatrics|pediatrician}}.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Steve, Steve, hearten up. I don't think he actually ate children, so you got that goin' for you.<br /> <br /> S: That's true. I'm also a child-eater. Don't forget.<br /> <br /> E: You're a cannibal!<br /> <br /> S: Under publishers, they list {{w|Discover (magazine)|Discover Magazine}}, {{w|National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic Magazine}}, {{w|Modern Farmer}}, {{w|MIT Technology Review}}, {{w|Forbes|Forbes.com}}, yep, they're all shills for Monsanto.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, to put this into perspective, first of all, Steve has already had a stalker show up at his house.<br /> <br /> S: That's true.<br /> <br /> J: And it was scary.<br /> <br /> R: When was that?<br /> <br /> S: About a year ago.<br /> <br /> J: The guy had an article from {{w|Skeptical Inquirer}} that Steve wrote, right? You wrote the article, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> J: And finds Steve's address, shows up at his house, and the guy had to be removed! Like, seriously! So now, who knows who's reading this guy's blog, and who knows how close they live to Steve, or any of these people?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's messed up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And that's a true call to action! He is not being subtle here. So, joking about it actually relieves some of the craziness, it makes you kind of feel better about it, but the real deal here is that this guy, I think he committed a crime by writing that blog!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Mika Adams, he's always been a lunatic; now he's a dangerous lunatic.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: You know? He really should be ashamed of himself; this is just a shill for his supplements, you know?<br /> <br /> E: That's the ironic part of the whole thing, too. Who's doing the real damage here?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, just the whole thing reads like bizarro world. And it does show ... if he's sincere, if this is just not all a game that he's playing, this is how they see the world! They're the army of light, and skeptics, we are Hitler. It was at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Age_of_Autism Age of Autism] – I don't know if you guys ever peruse their blog.<br /> <br /> R: Occasionally, when I hate myself.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> S: They recently put up a post basically portraying themselves as {{w|Aragorn}} and the army of light, and we're {{w|Mordor}}; we're the host of Mordor.<br /> <br /> E: We are?<br /> <br /> R: (Groaning) Oh my god ...<br /> <br /> S: This is how these people view the world!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Yep. I wonder who {{w|Ent|Ents}} are?<br /> <br /> R: I think we all know who the Ents are.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I'll tell you one thing that none of these people ever say, &quot;I'm wrong frequently, and I change my mind. You know? Just give me proof, and I'll change my mind.&quot; Right? None of these other people are saying this. So, while we're on this topic, real quick, I just want to throw this in. Did you guys see the post about {{w|Ben Stein}}?<br /> <br /> R: Yes, his sexting?<br /> <br /> E: Wow! What was that about?<br /> <br /> J: Yeah! How embarassing and creepy! Oh boy! This is really, like, the freaks are coming out this week, guys. I don't know what's going on, but it's truly happening.<br /> <br /> E: I can just see his text! (Ben Stein impression) Can you take off your panties?<br /> <br /> R: It's gross.<br /> <br /> E: Panties? Panties.<br /> <br /> J: The quick thing is that he was gonna give this woman who was having a baby out of wedlock, or this single mom, he was gonna give her some money to help her and everything, but it all was basically like, &quot;I'm gonna give you this money to help you, and you're gonna send me naked pictures of you. And then when we meet, I want to hug and kiss you.&quot; That's what he said.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he wrote an article, because he's very much pro-life in addition to being anti-evolution and anti-science in general, he's anti-abortion. And so he wrote this article about how wonderful and giving he is, and said that there is this woman who was gonna get an abortion, so he gave her a load of money so that she could keep her child. And then she released the text where he basically yells at her for not agreeing to be cuddled. (Chuckles)<br /> <br /> S: Gotcha, little backfire.<br /> <br /> E: Maybe spellcheck got the better of that text or something, I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing though will ever beat {{w|Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles}} getting caught ... the whole Tampon comment?<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes.<br /> <br /> S: Nothing'll beat that.<br /> <br /> R: Ew! I don't even remember that, and I don't think I want to.<br /> <br /> E: (Royal accent) Bloody hell!<br /> <br /> S: Anyway, let's move on to some other news items.<br /> <br /> === Malaysia Flight MH17 Conspiracy Theories &lt;small&gt;(23:24)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecl9_OdajII<br /> <br /> S: This is crazy night, tonight. We got some crazy stuff going down.<br /> <br /> R: Apparently.<br /> <br /> E: (Shivering out loud) Oh-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: Evan!<br /> <br /> B (Inaudible)&lt;! Night's?&gt; still not crazy!<br /> <br /> S: I understand another {{w|Malaysia Airlines|Malaysia airline}} went down. We do have to get a little serious and say that obviously our hearts go out to the families of people who are lost in the Malaysia flight MH-17 downing. But already, this has spawned some conspiracy theories.<br /> <br /> E: It certainly has. Now, Malaysia airline flight 17, or {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 17|MH-17}} went down on July 17th, 2014. It was a passenger flight, a {{w|Boeing 777}} heading from {{w|Amsterdam}} to {{w|Kuala Lumpur}}. And it's believed to have been shot down with a surface to air missile, although they're still investigating exactly who is responsible for this. It is believed the ... the main theory right now is that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists inside the Ukraine, and we'll get to that in a minute.<br /> <br /> But in the meantime, when your worldview is one of a skeptical nature, and you hear of this kind of terrible news breaking, you first feel shock. That's followed pretty quickly by horror. And about 10 seconds into wrapping your mind around this situation, you start to think, &quot;Oh geez! What are the conspiracy theorists actually gonna make of all this!&quot;<br /> <br /> And I'm not really exaggerating. I do believe that in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, these conspiracy theories have started to go out there. It was {{w|Charles Spurgeon|Charles Haddon Spurgeon}} who originally said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.<br /> <br /> R: Well, no one really knows if he was the first to say it, which I like about that particular quote. No one really knows who said it.<br /> <br /> E: It's attributed to {{w|Mark Twain}} and {{w|Winston Churchill}}, but ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the famous person effect. Quotes get attributed to famous people even when they didn't say them.<br /> <br /> E: So, I knew when I saw them, like, I've gotta go a little deeper here. So, Charles Spurgeon, I'll put my nickle down on him. British preacher. In any case, look, we know the gathering of evidence, and analysis of the evidence, it takes time to sort out. But these conspiracies and falsehoods, they take seconds if not minutes to generate on the internet. Before you know it, there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people all over the world reading all sorts of ridiculous claims.<br /> <br /> So, while they were still figuring out what was going on, and the wreckage was smouldering, and the bodies were still warm, the first batch of conspiracy tweets went out. Here's one, &quot;#Obama trying to kill #Putin. Putin's plane was following almost the same route as crashed Malaysian Airlines MH-17.&quot; So, essentially, what was happening there is they're claiming that they mistook it as the plane that {{w|Vladimir Putin}}, the President Putin, of Russia, was in the plane, and that that was the real target.<br /> <br /> So, there's that; but actually, his plane did not follow that route. That was quickly put to bed. Next one that came out: &quot;{{w|Rothschild family|Rothschilds}} tried to kill Putin, and they hit the wrong plane today because of {{w|BRIC|BRICs,}} banks, and the USDEND. How stupid could this Zionist idiot be?&quot; So, okay, apparently, pro-Israeli people are part of this now.<br /> <br /> Here's the next one, &quot;Escalating war intentions date 7/17, fight 17, plane 777, conspiracy theory?&quot; So, there's some sort of numerology going on there.<br /> <br /> S: Always.<br /> <br /> E: Although I think what they're referring to is that this particular plane first flew, they say, on July 17th 1997, and it went down on July 17th, 2014, and there's some undeniable significance to this, apparently.<br /> <br /> S: And don't forget flight 800. {{w|TWA Flight 800|TWA 800}} was brought down on July 17th.<br /> <br /> E: Now, yeah, you guys know certainly about that as you've done a little bit of investigation into what happened there because for the longest time, I don't know, do people still believe that it was <br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> E: shot down by a missile?<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: So, that conspiracy theory still has legs to it. And this obviously, here some conspiracy theorists, they believe that this somehow ties into that as well. How could it not? So, various reports also came out, they were a pile of perfect, &quot;Passports recovered with no damage,&quot; with faces on the passports that look like computer generated images. So, there we go, we're already seeing the evidence that's starting to be planted at the site, trying to make it look like some sort of cover up.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so that's ridiculous for a number of reasons. You could watch that on YouTube, he had a video up, showing video of people showing the passports. First of all, there's like, 20 passports, or 30 passports out of the hundreds of people on the plane. I'm sure some people had their passports buried deep in the carry-on or whatever, and they survived! You know, its not, right? It's not that unusual that they were able to recover some undamaged passports.<br /> <br /> They mention, &quot;These passports all look new! Why aren't they old and worn?&quot; Okay, well how many travelers get their passport for the trip that they're taking? I remember when we went to Australia a few years ago, we all had brand-spanking new passports. Maybe not Rebecca, 'cause she travels more than we do.<br /> <br /> J: I didn't either 'cause I go to Sweden now and then.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but most of us did!<br /> <br /> E: The whole family.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. My whole family, I know Bob did. We all had to get new passports. We hadn't travelled in a while, alright? They expire after 10 years. Anyway, that wasn't remarkable either. And just saying they look like computer generated people? That's just subjective ...<br /> <br /> E: Nonsense.<br /> <br /> S: Nonsense! Yeah. They look perfectly fine to me. I would never ever have thought that if the person didn't mention something. They look like normal pictures. It's just silly.<br /> <br /> E: Here's another one, guys. &quot;MH-17 is actually {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH-370}},&quot; which is of course the Malaysian Airlines 777 that supposedly went down in the Indian ocean. So here, they're both the same plane, same airline. A commenter from &quot;Above Top Secret&quot; stated, &quot;It could be the missing plane rigged with explosives that had only just reappeared after vanishing for months. Why would they do this? Why, to start WWIII.&quot;<br /> <br /> R: Obviously.<br /> <br /> J: Of course!<br /> <br /> S: How's that working out?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, right. Exactly. Alright, so what probably did happen? Well, obvously, they're still investigating it. Nothing's been determined officially, definitively yet. It's a war zone going on there. This is gonna be ... it's a mess to try to sort through it all, and just try to prevent local authorities from tampering with evidence. And there are legitimate concerns, and this is gonna be a long, drawn out process. Very, very sad for the families involved here.<br /> <br /> But, here's what I think is a reasonable candidate for what happened. There is audio out there of pro-Russian rebels admitting to shooting down a plane earlier that day. Something like 20 minutes later there were radio broadcasts that were picked up and recorded. And here's some of the transcript of what those recordings. Now, these are between pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine going back and forth between them.<br /> <br /> One guy says, &quot;We've just shot down a plane. It fell beyond this town.&quot;<br /> The other guy rings in and says, &quot;Pilots. Were there pilots?&quot;<br /> And the guy answers, &quot;Gone to search and photograph the plane. Smoking.&quot;<br /> &quot;How many minutes ago?&quot;<br /> &quot;About 30 minutes ago.&quot;<br /> They're saying the plane fell apart in the air in the area of such and such place, too difficult to pronounce.<br /> &quot;What do you have there?&quot;<br /> &quot;It was 100% a passenger, civilian aircraft.&quot;<br /> &quot;Are there people?&quot;<br /> &quot;Holy shit! The debris fell right into the yards.&quot;<br /> &quot;What kind of aircraft?&quot;<br /> &quot;Don't know yet.&quot;<br /> They asked if there are any weapons, or any evidence of weapons.<br /> And they said, &quot;Absolutely nothing. There's civilian items, medicinal stuff, toilet paper.&quot;<br /> &quot;Are there documents?&quot;<br /> &quot;Yes, there's an Indonesian student document.&quot;<br /> And the commander wraps up by saying, &quot;They wanted to bring some spies to us, then they should not fly. We are at war here.&quot;<br /> <br /> So this is just parts of a larger conversation that go on. You can download, you can find it online. It's easy to find. Also, one of these pro-Russian Ukrainians apparently went onto their Facebook page and made a post about it not long after it went down stating that they had taken down what they believe to be an invader's or military aircraft. A military target was hit and brought down. And then an hour later, that post disappeared when they realized that, &quot;Oh, it was a civilian aircraft going down.&quot;<br /> <br /> So I think the truth lies somewhere here. I don't think there's anything extraordinary. I don't think you have to jump through too many hoops or draw too many conclusions to see that this is probably one of the more likely paths that this will take as this unfolds.<br /> <br /> R: Well, I mean, one of the things that's really fuelling these conspiracy theories, though, is actually the Russian state press. Did you guys read {{w|Julia Ioffe|Julia Ioffe's}} piece in {{w|The New Republic}}?&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt; It's really eye-opening. It's a look at what the Russian media is reporting about flight 17. And it's pretty much exclusively conspiracy theories. There's not a word about the pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels. There's no interacting with the victims' families, which is fuelling these conspiracy theories that say, &quot;Oh, well, the victims didn't even have family! So, these were made up people.&quot; If they had families, we would see them on the news. Well, the news isn't putting the families on the news.<br /> <br /> So, a lot of this seems to be aided by this pro-Russian media that is helping to kind of cover up what's happening here. And it's pretty disturbing. To put it out there, my favourite conspiracy theory, of course, is the one that claims that the plane was actually full of corpses when it left Amsterdam, and that the pilots took off, and then parachuted to safety after the plane was in the air. And then later on, bombs were detonated, blowing up the plane over Ukraine.<br /> <br /> And, of course, if any of you watch {{w|Sherlock (TV series)|Sherlock}}, you know that that is actually a plot from one of the episodes of Sherlock.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right.<br /> <br /> R: And yet it's being reported as news. As an actual theory for what happened on Russian mainstream media. So, thank goodness for the internet. I just hope that enough people in Russia have access to foreign news sources via the internet because they're certainly not getting it from their local news.<br /> <br /> === Ken Ham Denies Aliens &lt;small&gt;(34:10)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aliens-are-sinners/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we got one more crazy-town news item for this week.<br /> <br /> E: Won't you take me to ...<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Jay, get us updated on {{w|Ken Ham|Ken Ham's}} latest shenanigans.<br /> <br /> J: Heh, Ken Ham! Yeah, I titled this one, &quot;Ken Ham is Talking Spam.&quot; So, you may have heard ...<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like a {{w|Dr. Seuss}} book! (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: Ken Ham, Ham I am. So you guys heard about Ken Ham said that all aliens are going to hell, so NASA should stop looking for them. Right, you've heard that?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't believe it when I heard it, but yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But it's not actually 100% factual. Ken Ham ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, aliens aren't all going to hell?<br /> <br /> J: Well, there's some wrinkles in here. Let me explain it to you. Ken Ham himself stated that the media is doing a bad job of reporting the truth. And he said that he did not in fact say that aliens are going to hell. He said that because they are not Adam's descendants – Adam, from the Garden of Eden Adam – because they are not Adam's descendants, then they cannot have salvation.<br /> <br /> Ken Ham says that life did not evolve, but was specifically created by God. Now, the first question you might ask, this is what my brain went to when I heard that. If aliens exist, then God must have created them. And if God created them, then maybe God has other plans for them as well, right? Just plans we don't know about because how do we know about God's plans anyway?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and actually, that brings up the point that if they're not descendants of Adam, and all sin comes from Adam and Eve, then it's possible that aliens exist, and they are perfect.<br /> <br /> S: No, but Ham's got you covered there, Rebecca. He said that they do have sin.<br /> <br /> R: Oh ...<br /> <br /> S: They apparently, yeah, because Adam's sin has spread throughout the multiverse.<br /> <br /> R: (Cracking up) What?<br /> <br /> S: But salvation is only for his descendants.<br /> <br /> R: Well, that's not fair!<br /> <br /> B: It says multiverse right in the Bible! The verse of (inaudible)<br /> <br /> J: Guys, Ken Ham specifically said though, he doesn't even believe that they exist because of the word of the Gospels. He thinks because of all that, therefore God would not have made aliens, for whatever his reasoning is, but expressly, they don't exist.<br /> <br /> So, there really was a screw up here with the press stating all of those things, 'cause I did read his two articles that he wrote on this, and he didn't really say that. It's just implied.<br /> <br /> S: It's implied.<br /> <br /> E: Does that mean Neptune doesn't exist because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible? Planet Neptune?<br /> <br /> R: Unicorns do exist.<br /> <br /> J: No, a few people that wrote about this, including Steve, put this {{w|Carl Sagan}} quote in there to kind of explain this other part. &quot;In one unremarkable galaxy among hundreds of billions, there is an unremarkable star, among hundreds of billions of stars in that one galaxy. Around that star revolves a world with life. Some people who live on that world believe they are the center of the universe.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was a paraphrase. {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}} paraphrased it in the new Cosmos, as well. It's a very, I think, powerful sentiment when you put it that way. You zero in from the universe in to this one little planet in the corner of one galaxy. And imagine the people on that planet thinking that they're the center of the entire universe. Not only that, not only the center of the universe, but Ken Ham thinks that the rest of the universe is just a show for us. And that when the salvation does eventually come, the rest of the universe is going to burn because it's just there for show. It's like the parsley on your side of your dish. You know what I mean? It's just a garnish.<br /> <br /> E: Well, Bible said all the world's a stage, so ... and we are merely players. (Inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: And the other thing, Jay, that really struck me, reading his post, is how narcisistic he is,<br /> <br /> J: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: in that the universe does revolve around him. Not only that, but he writes as if scientists and skeptics, we define ourselves by not believing &lt;I&gt;him&lt;/I&gt;. We are secularists. Scientists are secularists. And we're doing this to rebel against God; and we're looking for aliens so that we can prove evolution, to finally stick it to those creationists.<br /> <br /> You know what, Ham? We don't care about you and your creationism. We don't think about it all the time. We love science, and we love exploring the universe, and evolution is true because of all the evidence for evolution. It's not all about sticking it in your eye. But he writes as if that's what it's all about! It's just all about ...<br /> <br /> R: No, that's just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: his own belief system. <br /> <br /> R: (Chuckles) Sticking it in his eye is just a bonus.<br /> <br /> S: It's just a bonus, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: He says he's like, to add to what Steve was just saying, Ken Ham wrote, &quot;Many secularists want to discover alien life hoping that aliens can answer the deepest questions of life. Where did we come from? And what is the purpose and meaning of life?&quot; Well, first of all, I'm not looking for aliens to answer the &quot;where did we come from&quot; question. And second of all, what is the purpose and meaning of life? I don't need to ask anybody else that. I'll define that for myself, thanks Ken. I'm certainly not gonna get the meaning of life out of a book.<br /> <br /> R: Unless it's {{w|Dune (franchise)|Dune}}.<br /> <br /> J: Well ...<br /> <br /> S: Jay, if you could ask aliens a question, what would be your one question?<br /> <br /> J: Oh my god, really? Like, putting me on the spot! Okay, so ...<br /> <br /> B: How do I make a {{w|DeLorean time machine|flux capacitor}}!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs)<br /> <br /> J: There's a lot of in's and out's but I'll play your game, you rogue. Okay, so I'm asking a seemingly super-advanced, super-intelligent race a question. I guess my question is, &quot;How can I be more like you?&quot; I'd want to know what ... oh god, Steve! What I really want to know? If I could ask any question just to get a really cool, science answer ...<br /> <br /> S: That's the point, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Is there a multiverse?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Is there a multiverse? That's a good one.<br /> <br /> E: No, it's not!<br /> <br /> S: You could ask, &quot;{{w|String theory}}, {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, or some other third thing?&quot;<br /> <br /> J: And then they'll say, &quot;Largal snazzle theory!&quot; Or even worse, they'd just look at each other and laugh in their alien tongue. (Strange laugh) Like, oh my god!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, like, what would you do if a cockroach asked you to explain the nature of the universe?<br /> <br /> S: If it could ask.<br /> <br /> J: Ask Steve, &quot;Brown sugar, or white sugar?&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Start on the bottom of my shoe.<br /> <br /> J: That's your question? Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Well, Jay, wait 'till your son gets old enough to start asking incredibly naive questions,<br /> <br /> J: I'm ready! I love those types of questions.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, right!<br /> <br /> J: I need to put (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: I would be fascinated in what kind of question a cockroch would have for me.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, me too.<br /> <br /> S: And, I would be happy to engage in conversation with a cockroach.<br /> <br /> R: I'm not saying that you'd feel too good to engage with a cockroach. I'm just saying there's some things a cockroach – even a talking cockroach – is just probably never gonna grasp. I mean, it lives for a couple days (chuckles). You have a lot of time ...<br /> <br /> S: My serious point though, is, if it could ask, then I would answer the question that it could ask. So, my question to an alien might seem naive to them, but given my question, gimme a freakin' answer. That's obviously, my question informs them of what I'm capable of understanding in a way.<br /> <br /> J: But also, you could also say, &quot;Let me help you ask better questions.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Oh, so here's my question. &quot;What question should I ask you?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ha! Thats ...<br /> <br /> R: I guess I just feel like there's a very good chance that when we're talking about the ultimate nature of the universe, we might be talking about ... like, we've had this discussion before. We might be running up against something that is simply unable to be grasped by the average human brain. Like, it might be physically impossible for you to understand it.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, is all reminds me of a {{w|Babylon 5}} episode where they found this alien probe, and the probe basically asked a whole bunch of questions. Each question got a little bit harder than the one before, scientific questions primarily. And ...<br /> <br /> J: 2 + 2! 2+ 3!<br /> <br /> B: they deduced that if you answer all the way up to like, question 20, if you can get to 20 and answer it properly, then<br /> <br /> E: 20 questions!<br /> <br /> B: that's a clue to the aliens that you could be a potential threat, and then the probe blows you up. So, they decided not to answer that one question, and they were cool.<br /> <br /> J: Steve, you remember, Steve, from your blog post about Ken Ham? You wrote something really cool, that, um ...<br /> <br /> S: I always write something really cool!<br /> <br /> J: that {{w|Stephen Jay Gould|Gould}} said about smashing the pillars of ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that science is basically a process of smashing the pillars of our own ego. That first we thought we were the center of the universe, the we realized that wasn't true. Hey, we're the center of our galaxy; no, that's not even true. Then, that we're the pinnacle of evolution, and that's not true. We're unique in the universe, and that's not true.<br /> <br /> J: So, we're reduced down to just saying, &quot;My mother loves me!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Yeah, right. We're completely unremarkable. We're not special in that we are of the universe. The physical laws that made us exist throughout the universe. That doesn't mean though, that humanity isn't unique, that we don't have our specialness, and that we can't, again, make our own meaning within our own context. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we're a tiny little speck on a speck on a speck, but ...<br /> <br /> B: You missed a few specks!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Yeah. But from our perspective, we make our own meaning, as you said before, Jay. And yeah, but in Ken Ham's other world, it's like, unless ... we're it! You know? The rest of the universe is sludge, is nothing. Then, somehow, it doesn't have any meaning. It always strikes me as a very childish view of reality.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, a six year old! I read this in a {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} once! And it was done very well! Only Calvin put it much more eloquently than Ken Ham did. But essentially, he said that the whole universe came down to him, and history is justified because Calvin was born. Basically, that was it. Very amusing.<br /> <br /> S: Calvin would have it all over Ham.<br /> <br /> === The Vaccination Chronicles &lt;small&gt;(44:21)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> S: Well, guys, before we go on to the next news item, I want to mention very quickly that {{w|Richard Saunders (skeptic)|Richard Saunders}}, our good friend from down under, has released a video called [http://youtu.be/mTprFOmIjIg The Vaccination Chronicles]. You can get to it at [http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Skeptics.com.au]. Look up The Vaccination Chronicles, you'll get to it on the Googles.<br /> <br /> And, it's a really cool project that Richard did. It's basically a lot of interviews with people who had vaccine-preventable diseases or knew people who died from vaccine-preventable diseases. So, it's a way of chronicling what the whole vaccination thing is all about, because it's important information to have. So, give it a listen.<br /> <br /> === Pits on the Moon &lt;small&gt;(45:00)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-surface-of-the-moon-is-the-pits-unless-youre-in-a-pit<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Bob, tell us about pits on the Moon.<br /> <br /> B: This was pretty cool. I learned a lot about the Moon actually, doing research for this. So, pits on the Moon may prove to actually be a valuable resource for future astronauts if we ever get our butts back there again. Now, these pits are big, steep walled holes that exist in various locations on the Moon, kind of like that pit that appeared in Siberia in the news recently.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, they look like sink holes.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Now, these were discovered using sophisticated algorythms that searched through various high resolution lunar images that we've accumulated over the years. And they found over 200 of them varying in size from just 5 yards to more than 1000 yards. So, pretty big. And that's after only looking at about 40% of the lunar surface. So there could be easily 3, 4, 500 of these guys across the entire Moon's surface.<br /> <br /> But they're found in generally two different types of locations. The first, as you might imagine, are, they found 'em in large craters where the impact was so nasty that it created these pools of lava called, &quot;impact melt ponds&quot; that later hardened. The 2nd location is the lunar maria, which form familiar {{w|Pareidolia|pareidolia}} images of the Man on the Moon, that we're all familiar with. At least for our culture. Lots of other cultures have lots of different images that they can see.<br /> <br /> But these dark areas were once thought to be seas, hense the name maria, but they turned out to be hardened lava flows that extend for hundreds of miles. Now, we're not exactly sure how the pits formed, but most common theories include the roof of caves or voids that collapsed; that one seems pretty obvious. Vibrations from meteor impacts could have opened some of these up. Or perhaps underground lava flows? We have these on Earth, that create these hollow tubes that eventually empty out. So, you got this tube of hardened lava that could have opened up.<br /> <br /> So what good are these pits? What are we gonna do with them? Well, I think exploring them would be a hell of a lot of fun. But the main benefit would be as a likely Moon habitat. And that's mainly because the Moon is a lot deadlier than you may think.<br /> <br /> First of all, you can get hit by {{w|micrometeorite}} ... if you have extended stays on the surface, chances increase that you can get hit by one of these. Sure, it's kinda rare, but if it did happen, you would probably be toast, because even a space suit would do very little.<br /> <br /> E: No atmosphere to burn up those particles, right?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Lunar soil|Moon dust}} is actually another big problem that the pits could protect against. The deeper you go, the less of the regolith. So, I know we've all heard of Moon dust, but it actually really was a big pain in the ass for the astronauts. It's as fine as flour, but as rough as sandpaper. So it's kind of nasty just to feel it.<br /> <br /> And I didn't know this one, some astronauts even had a physical reaction to this Moon dust that they called &quot;Lunar hay fever.&quot; And this was made worse by the astronauts when they would enter into the crew cabin from the outside. The air would eddy and swirl. You had these little, mini-dust storms that would just throw the dust everywhere and on everything. And also, the spacesuits themselves had major problems with the dust. So, it was just not fun. And that's something that you're gonna want to live with all the time.<br /> <br /> But the worst thing about the Moon's surface, though, was probably the radiation. Studies have shown that surface dwellers on the Moon are actually exposed to 30 or 40% greater risk from radiation than previously thought. You would think that the entire Moon itself would protect you, right? You've got the Moon under you. I mean, it's blocking half the sky, or whatever. And you would think it would at least block at least that half of the radiation so that you're not getting pelted from 360 degrees. But that's actually not correct.<br /> <br /> The surface under your feet is radioactive. When the {{w|Cosmic ray|cosmic rays}} hit the surface, they create these little nuclear reactions that spray secondary particles – {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} – that can penetrate your skin, and even mess with your DNA. Obviously, this isn't much of a concern if you're there for just a few days. None of stuff is. But, for extended stays, which I hope one day we will eventually have, all of this stuff can just get worse and worse, and just be really nasty. And eventually deadly, with the radiation especially.<br /> <br /> What the pits can offer though, is great protection against this radiation. All they would have to do is construct a habitat in the pit. And if you build it away from the overhang by whatever 50 or 100 feet, then you're extremely well protected from this radiation.<br /> <br /> So, we'll see what happens if we ever consider making these lunar habitats in these pits. I think it would be a great benefit. Could really actually help save lives.<br /> <br /> E: You could build a monolith in one of these pits.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Ha! It's already there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, was it, in {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}}, the lunar base was underground? I guess it could have been built in one of these pits.It had that kind of flower petal roof, remember that, that closed back up?<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that was cool. Alright, thanks Bob. So, we'll be living in the pits on the Moon one day.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy? &lt;small&gt;(51:46)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> *Answer to #469: Janov<br /> * #470: Benny Hinn <br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, we have to get caught up on Who's that Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay. We have a couple episodes to catch up on. So, back from episode 469, we played this noisy. Here we go!<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;And for each of the needs that are not fulfilled, there's pain. And it's registered on different levels of the brain. And what we found a way to do is go back down into the brain and get those pains out of the system. So you don't have to take pills and stuff to stuff it back. What we do is little by little, take the pain out of the system that are based on not-fulfilled need. &lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: That all sounds very cromulent<br /> <br /> E: Yeah (Chuckles) that's not babble at all, is it? Those are the words spoken by {{w|Arthur Janov}. You may remember him from the '70's – cool dude! He's American psychologist, psychotherapist, creator of primal therapy, which he uses as a treatment for mental illness involving descending into sort of this repressed childhood pain experience, and you sort of scream out your bad stuff that happened to you when you were a kid.<br /> <br /> Yeah, no science behind it. It's, you know ... {{w|Yoko Ono}} and {{w|John Lenin}} were perhaps his two most famous clients, and that why all in the '70's, he attained the fame and recognition that he nay not have otherwise. So, Arthur Janov. There were plenty of correct answers, but only one winner for that week. Heptron from the message boards, you're the winner. Congratulations!<br /> <br /> And, moving on to episode 470 – wow! 470! Nice round number. We had this one. Here we go, remember this?<br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Dear Jesus, now heal, that eye. Heal that eye. Watch her head and the piano (Audience laughs)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> E: Kinda defeats the purpose of Jesus healing you if you're gonna fall back in ecstacy and die of a head injury on a piano, so, very, very good advice from the one and only {{w|Benny Hinn}}.<br /> <br /> S: Yes, Benny Hinn.<br /> <br /> E: You guys know who Benny Hinn is?<br /> <br /> J: Yes, we do.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he chased ladies around while a saxaphone played a funny song.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Are you sure about that? (Funny saxophone music starts to play) You sure about that?<br /> <br /> R: Okay, we get it.<br /> <br /> E: Wait, there's more! Benny Hinn's a faith healer, and a real scoundrel (laughs) let's face it when it comes to this stuff. {{w|James Randi}} has gone after him, and many other prominent skeptics have had many a word to say about his shenanigans and antics. Amanda Rivera, winner for episode 470 on Who's that Noisy. So, congratulations! Very well done!<br /> <br /> Moving on, brand new Who's that Noisy. Tell me what's making this sound.<br /> <br /> (Repeated buzzing making the Eye of the Tiger song)<br /> <br /> E: So, go ahead, and send us your thoughts as to what made that Noisy. You can email it to us at WTN@theskepticsguide.org, or go ahead and post it on our forums, sguforums.com. Look for the subthread called &quot;Who's that Noisy.&quot; It'll be in there. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: And if you have absolutely no idea, you could email us at WTF.org.<br /> <br /> E: Yes, yes, and WTF stands for Where's the Fork?<br /> <br /> S: Right.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Humor in Science &lt;small&gt;(55:32)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Love the show – long time listener and so forth. I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al fan… I was listening to the new Weird Al Yankovic album Mandatory Fun earlier today and it got me thinking (always a good thing) – do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this – it attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy (if somewhat disposable) song. George Hrab also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humour can be a double edged sword, particularly if people think you're making fun of them. What do you think? Is humour a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not? On a totally different note, I am a hot air balloon pilot and would like to offer you a flight when you're in Australia. Hopefully the finer details of the trip are starting to come together – please let me know if you're at all interested as there are some logistics involved in arranging crew. I gave Geo a flight the last time he was out here so he should be able to vouch for my comparative safety. Keep up the good work, Cheers, John Turnbull Sydney Australia ps. forgive the constant misspelling of the word 'humour' – I am Australian and that is how it is spelt ;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, we're gonna do one email this week. This email comes from John Turnbull from Sydney, Australia. Rebecca, this one is going to be covered by you, so do you want to read the email?<br /> <br /> R: Sure. &quot;Love the show! Long-time listener,&quot; and so forth, &quot;I look forward to meeting you all at the upcoming Australian Skeptic's Conference. This question may be of particular interest to Jay, as he strikes me as a Weird Al Fan.&quot; Sorry, Jay; I'm stealing this one from you. &quot;I was listening to the new {{w|&quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovich}} album {{w|Mandatory Fun}} earlier, and it got me thinking,&quot; always a good thing, &quot;do you think humour is a good introduction to skepticism? Weird Al's song, 'Word Crimes' is a good example of this. It attacks common grammatical and linguistic errors via a catchy, if somewhat disposable song. {{w|George Hrab}} also skirts the line between education and piss-taking in some of his songs, but humor can be a double-edged sword, particularly if people think you are making fun of them. What do you think? Is humor a good way to get around mental barriers that a logical argument may not?&quot; And then he offers us a hot air balloon ride when we come to Australia. (Laughter) &quot;Keep up the good work. Cheers, John Turnbull. {{w|Sydney, Australia}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> Thank you so much, John. And I apologize, you did address this to Jay, but I called dibs because I happened to give a lecture on this very topic, the use of humor in science. I just gave it to the {{w|Minnesota Atheists}}, <br /> <br /> S: (Swedish sounding accent) Oh ya?<br /> <br /> R: in Minneapolis last week.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, darn tootin!<br /> <br /> R: Is that your Minnesota accent? (Snickers)<br /> <br /> S: I'm sure it was real good, ya.<br /> <br /> R: I didn't meet a single person who talked like that. That's more {{w|Wisconsin}}.<br /> <br /> E: Really?<br /> <br /> S: I learned it on {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}, so ...<br /> <br /> E: Yeah! I mean, everything I learned about Minnesota, I learned in Fargo.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, well, Fargo's like, different than Minneapolis.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, real good now, okay.<br /> <br /> R: So, John, you're absolutely correct in that, yes, humor is a good way to encourage critical thinking, and science education, and yes, also it can be a double-edged sword. You need to watch how you're using that humor, because sometimes you might have the opposite effect that you're going for. <br /> <br /> What I talk about in my lecture is three different ways that comedy can be of use. One thing is it helps get aggression out. It makes us feel better. So, when we're venting about skeptic stuff, like getting sued, or someone threatening to kill us, and we use humor to do that, that's because humor actually does help people deal with sometimes upsetting, or even traumatic things.<br /> <br /> And there have been a number of studies that back this up. One of the ones I talk about is great one in which subjects were asked to make jokes about gruesome pictures like a man gutting a fish. One subject made the joke, &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; And another made the joke, &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot; (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> So, what the researchers found was that people who were able to come up with jokes about these gruesome images came away with more positive emotions, and less intense negative emotions. But they found the effect was most drastic with the positive jokes, like the first one I told you. &quot;He always wanted to work with animals.&quot; The effect was not quite as noticeable with sort of negative jokes like &quot;Great job for people with body odor.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, that's one of the things that comedy can help you do, and that we do quite often in skepticism. Comedy can also, yes, help you learn. It can get around certain mental barriers that people have to learning. Another study I talk about in my lecture is Humor in Pedagogy by Randi Gardner. He forced 114 students to watch a series of three, 40 minute recorded lectures on statistics, which I think he chose because it was the most boring topic he could think up. Sorry, statisticians, but it's true.<br /> <br /> And for some of the students he cut in topical jokes. So, jokes that had to do with the statistics lessons being learned. And for the other students, there were no jokes. And what he found was that the students who saw the funny lectures – and the did rate the lectures as actually being funny – the group that saw those lectures were more likely to report that they liked the professor; and they also were more likely to retain information from the lecture than the students who didn't get any humor.<br /> <br /> And the other thing I talk about humor being able to do is persuade, because there's been a lot of research that shows that there's this persuasion theory basically, of humor, that suggests that there are certain ways that humor can bypass our ability to think critically sometimes about what we're hearing.<br /> <br /> For instance, there's been a number ... most of the research in this area comes from the advertising world because they directly deal with persuasion, and what is going to be the most persuasive for the greatest number of people. And by and large, they find that things like ironic humor can actually be more persusive to people, and they think that it might be because it forces your brain to do more work to figure out what the joke is. And it makes you less able to necessarily deal with, to come up with arguments against what you're being told, basically.<br /> <br /> And, the research that backs this up, there have been a number of studies where they look at the difference between just sort of goofy, easy, visual humor, and more ironic wise cracks. And what they find is that people exposed to wise cracks tend to be more easily persuaded than people who are just looking at cutsey cartoons and such.<br /> <br /> So, that's just part of the theory. There are a number of others. Humor tends to make people like the person better, who is using the humor, which makes them more interested in being persuaded by them. If they don't like you, then it's not likely that they're going to be persuaded by any of your arguments.<br /> <br /> S: So, I watched the Weird Al Yankovich videos, especially the one on the tinfoil.<br /> <br /> R: Yes, oh my god!<br /> <br /> S: They're funny. They're funny. But I think that kind of humor, I could imagine a conspiracy theorist watching that; I don't think they're gonna learn anything specifically. That was fluffy to the point where I don't think that people are gonna walk away from that without any kind of hard-hitting message.<br /> <br /> R: Oh yeah. I should point out that when I say that his humor is the type that's good for learning, I don't mean that necessarily he's using it for that. But it is the sort of, yeah. It's this sort of nice humor that could work if he does an educational type thing.<br /> <br /> S: But I do think, like, {{w|South Park}} might be pretty close to the sweet spot. They really do a great job on some issues using humor, and satire, and ridicule to ... but with meat! That, I think ... a very great vehicle. We've often talked about the cold reading episode, where they nail it! They totally show why cold reading works, and why it's dumb. <br /> <br /> R: Yeah, and I think it's a really great point to bring up South Park. And I think that they are a great example, particularly of the use of sarcasm and irony as a way to bypass people making up counter-arguments to what they're saying. And that's the sort of thing that, as people who want to educate and persuade others, it's very good when people on our side are using it.<br /> <br /> But obviously, we are talking about something that is in a way bypassing critical thinking. There have been sometimes that I've seen a South Park episode, I'm like, &quot;Oh! They're actually getting something really wrong here, and they're probably convincing a lot of people of something that maybe they shouldn't be convincing them of.<br /> <br /> S: They're not right just because they're funny.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Alright ...<br /> <br /> R: But, they are funny when they're right.<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah. They're especially funny when they're right, yeah.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:04:38)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.mpg.de/8313923/polarized_light_bats Item #1]: A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723161912.htm Item #2]: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102959Item #3]: A 15-year study of blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north.<br /> <br /> S:Well guys, let's move on to Science or Fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fakeroni. We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> (Rebecca quietly groans)<br /> <br /> S: I say that just to get the groan from Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: I know, I know.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> R: I don't like giving you the satisfaction, but I can't help it.<br /> <br /> S: Can't help the groan.<br /> <br /> E: Primal reaction.<br /> <br /> S: The theme is {{w|Those Amazing Animals}}. You guys remember that show?<br /> <br /> R: What? What amazing animals?<br /> <br /> E: I remember {{w|Animals, Animals, Animals}}.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: And The {{w|New Zoo Revue}}. But I don't remember ...<br /> <br /> R: I know {{w|Zoobilee Zoo}}. Is that the same?<br /> <br /> B: Wha?<br /> <br /> R: Zoobilee Zoo? No?<br /> <br /> B: You're making that up!<br /> <br /> R: 227? Zoobilee Zoo. Look it up. I bet there are clips online. It was ridiculous, slightly terrifying.<br /> <br /> S: Those Amazing Animals was one of the first reality TV shows. And it starred {{w|Burgess Meredith}}, {{w|Priscilla Presley}}, and {{w|Jim Stafford}}.<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> B: You guys don't remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> B?: (Gravelly) Ya can't win, Rock!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> R: Burgess Meredith?<br /> <br /> (Someone makes quacking sound)<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so this is three items about animals, and here we go.<br /> <br /> R: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> S: Not about Burgess Meredith.<br /> <br /> E: They never knew what his age was. He would never admit to his age. So he died, nobody knew how old he really was!<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> E: Loved that story about him. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. Number 1: A new study finds that {{w|mouse-eared bat|mouse-eared bats}} use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. Item #2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keep their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. And Item #3: A 15 year study of {{w|Blue whale}} feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. Rebecca, you haven't done one of these in a while, so why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> R: (Groans) Man ... Okay.<br /> <br /> E: A double-groan!<br /> <br /> R: So, using the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their sense of direction. That's really cool. I can certainly see how that could work. Humans, we can't see the polarization of light, but obviously, we certainly can experience it when we wear polarized glasses. And I always thought that was really cool, the way that worked. And so, yeah, I can believe that.<br /> <br /> Honey bees keep their hives cool, using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer heat to cooler parts of the hive. That's weird. That's very complicated. And I can't imagine how that would actually work. So the hive heats up to greater than their body temperature. They absorb that and then go to a cooler part. That ... I don't know. Hives, I guess, they could take it down lower. I don't know. That's weird.<br /> <br /> Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north. So, this is something that makes sense to me, to the point where I'm kind of surprised to see this in a science or fiction, because this seems like a fact already. It's something that would already have been established. Which lends me to wonder if maybe it already was established, and this is a fiction because maybe a new study came out disproving this.<br /> <br /> But, it was my understanding that thanks to global warming, whales were finding food further and further north, and so, because of that, obviously, they're slowly migrating up that way. Maybe it's not Blue Whales, but I do know that climate change has had a very real impact on whales' migratory patterns, and things, I thought.<br /> <br /> So, I guess it's between the honey bees, and the whales for me. One because it sounds too ridiculous, and the other because it sounds too obvious. I guess I'll go with the honey bees one because I don't really see how ... that seems too complicated for the bees to be doing. I'll go with that one.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see, the mouse-eared bats using polarized light. It's funny how Rebecca just kinda blithely accepted that. That's actually fairly extraordinary for a mammal to use polarized light. I think they would be the only ones that I'm aware of. I'm not surprised though, that they could do that. That's really cool, and I really hope that that one is true.<br /> <br /> The Blue whale feeding behavior. Yeah ... yeah, that just makes perfect sense, which kind of scares me. But I'm having a big problem with the honey bee one. I just don't think bees have the heat capacity to make much of a difference. And even if they did, I think that their bodies are so tiny, I think they would transfer the heat before they took 10 paces. Also, don't they use their wings to cool their hive? I remember seeing something about that a long time ago. I'm gonna say the bees is fiction as well.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: I guess I'll jump right to it. The bees, that was the thing that stood out for me was the transfer of heat to cooler parts of the hive. I don't buy that part. Bees could be absorbing the heat. The only thing I think of is that it's not deliberate. It just happens to be that way, but I don't know. I think the bees are too purposeful in all that they do for something like that to be the case.<br /> <br /> And the Blue whales, real quick, moving steadily North, I thought about the global warming as well, Rebecca. So, there's nothing special there, I don't think. Polarization of lights, I didn't know about that one being the mammal's, especially the only mammals turn out to be that uses this. It's very cool. And a lot of things Rebecca said about that I kind of agree with as well. So, bees, fiction.<br /> <br /> S: And Jay<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I think the one about the bats and the polarization, that seems true. Let's go on to the bees one. I've just been thinking about this the last five minutes here. I mean, if you're saying that their bodies absorb the heat, I don't know about that. I would think that in order for them to absorb heat, that they would need, maybe their fur captures heat somehow, but I think they would be able to absorb more heat if they had a lot more fluid in them. I just don't see insects as having a lot of fluid in them. I just don't know how that they would be able to capture enough heat, and then transfer it. I'll join the group, and I'll say that the honey bees one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: So, I guess I can take these in order. We'll start with number 1. A new study finds that mouse-eared bats use the polarization of light in the evening sky to calibrate their magnetic sense of direction. You guys all think this one is science, and this one is ... have any of you heard of, by the way (Rogues laugh) {{w|Haidinger's brush}}?<br /> <br /> J: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: What is it?<br /> <br /> S: Haidinger's brush.<br /> <br /> R: No.<br /> <br /> E: {{w|Hadrian's Wall}}?<br /> <br /> S: Nope. Not Hadrian's Wall. Discovered by Austrian physicist {{w|Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger|Wilhelm Carl von Hadinger}} in 1844. I'll tell you about that in a second. This one is ... science!<br /> <br /> R: Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, baby, that's cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, these bats ... so bats, we've known already that they use the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate at night. But in the early evening, like just after the sun sets, but there's still light in the sky, they check it out. They use the polarization of the light in order to calibrate their magnetic sense, and that holds them for that evening.<br /> <br /> So, the way this was tested was the scientists had two groups of bats. A control group, and an experimental group. And they exposed them to artificial polarization, one rotated 90 degrees from the actually polarization. And then, in the middle of the night, when there was no light, they brought them out 20 miles away, and released them. Now, they should fly home. They should use their sense of navigation to fly back to the bat cave.<br /> <br /> The control group flew straight back to their cave. The experimental group flew off 90 degrees tangent from the direction of their cave.<br /> <br /> R: No-o-o!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so pretty cool! They seemed to ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, what happened to the bats?<br /> <br /> S: They all died.<br /> <br /> R: (Despairing) No-ho-ho-ho!<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> E: They ran into a wind turbine.<br /> <br /> S: They were lost for a day, and then the next day they found their way back? I don't know. But Hadinger's brush, people, some people can actually see polarized light.<br /> <br /> R: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. People, yes,<br /> <br /> B: People!<br /> <br /> S: human beings, yes.<br /> <br /> E: Now, this can be measured, Steve, in the brain scans and stuff?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, I don't know about that. It's a very subtle, bow-tie shaped, yellow light that takes up three to five degrees of vision that you can see against a blue sky when you have your back to the sun.<br /> <br /> E: (Whispering) You have your back to the (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: But not everybody can see it.<br /> <br /> E: We must have some listeners that have this. Please write us ...<br /> <br /> R: Well, I wanna go try this now, so what do you do? Your back to the sun, and you look at a blue sky?<br /> <br /> S: Yes. Yeah. And you see a little, a very tiny, and very faint little bow-tie of yellow light.<br /> <br /> R: I am super-excited to try this.<br /> <br /> S: That is, but if you see that, you are seeing polarized light.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool!<br /> <br /> B: Jesus!<br /> <br /> E: I gotta try this.<br /> <br /> R: I'm gonna feel like a superhero, if I can do that. What a useless superpower, but I don't care.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's go on to number 2: Researchers find that worker honey bees keeping their hives cool by using their bodies to absorb heat, and then transfer the heat to cooler parts of the hive. You guys all think this one is the fiction; you don't think that honey bees are that cool. (Rogues laugh) And this one ...<br /> <br /> R: Let's not turn this one into an insult!<br /> <br /> S: And this one (Talks over Evan) is ... science!<br /> <br /> (Rogues groan)<br /> <br /> B: Wow! Oh I feel so ...<br /> <br /> E: Damn, wrong.<br /> <br /> J: How did they do it, Steve?<br /> <br /> R: Don't GWR, 'cause I got teased relentlessly, by the way, in Minneapolis. People kept coming up to me, and being like, &quot;Do you know your Science or Fiction stats this year are in the toilet?&quot; I'm like, &quot;Yeah, I know. And guess what? They still are.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, so yeah! This is pretty cool. So they do use multiple methods to cool their hive, but what scientists discovered is that actually, the worker bees, especially the {{w|Brood (honey bee)|brood}} nest, needs to be cool because adult bees can can actually tolerate up to 50 degrees Celsius, 122 Farenheit, but the brood can only tolerate up to 35 degrees celcius, or 95 degrees Farenheit. So, what the scientists did, was they maliciously heated up the nest.<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! Scientists are the worst!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) They had to see what the bees would do! And the worker bees would push their bodies up against the brood nest wall, absorb the heat, and then fly to a cooler part of the nest and let the heat dissipate. And then keep shuttling the heat away from the brood nest with their bodies.<br /> <br /> J: But how were they doing this, Steve? I mean, aren't they spreading some type of liquid, or something? It can't just be their bodies.<br /> <br /> S: No, their bodies. Their bodies were transferring the heat. They would absorb the heat into their body, they would fly away and let it dissipate elsewhere.<br /> <br /> E: They'd let it ... so there must have been dissipation on the way to flying where all.<br /> <br /> S: Oh, sure, a little bit. Yeah, of course.<br /> <br /> J: Curses!<br /> <br /> S: It still was a net transfer of heat away from the brood nest. And it successfully reduced the temperature of the brood.<br /> <br /> E: Bastard!<br /> <br /> B: Crap!<br /> <br /> R: God dammit!<br /> <br /> S: Which means that a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding behavior finds that their feeding grounds have been moving steadily north is the fiction because a 15 year study of Blue whale feeding grounds published recently in {{w|PLOS ONE|Plos One}} have found that their feeding grounds are remarkably stable.<br /> <br /> They have in fact not moved, even during {{w|El Niño}} and {{w|La Niña}} years. So even when the environmental conditions have been significantly different, individual Blue whales will stick to their feeding pattern. There are differences among individuals, but the individuals themselves are returning to their same feeding location patterns year after year, even, again, across different weather patterns.<br /> <br /> The authors state that they're hoping that this information will be useful for shipping lanes, because the big problem here is that the Blue whale migrations cross over shipping lanes, and a lot of Blue Whales are getting killed by basically being hit by ships.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, that sucks.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so they could make some adjustments, they may be able to steer clear of the Blue whales because obviously, they're an endangered species. And I was able to say moving steadily north because Blue whales are entirely a northern species except maybe for {{w|Pygmy blue whale|pygmy blue whales}}. But they're mostly in North Atlantic, North Pacific, arctic type of creatures.<br /> <br /> E: How did scientists torment the blue whales, I mean ...<br /> <br /> (Rebecca laughs quietly)<br /> <br /> S: They tagged them.<br /> <br /> E: Tag 'em in pain!<br /> <br /> R: They slowly move their food away, and see if they follow.<br /> <br /> E: See, yes! Separate their calves from their mothers, and see what happens.<br /> <br /> S: Right, right. That is, they just tagged them. I'm sure the whales didn't notice the tags.<br /> <br /> E: Well ...<br /> <br /> J: Good job, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Well, nature got the better of us this week.<br /> <br /> R: Yep, good job.<br /> <br /> B: Screw you, Steve!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you. See, I found the bee one. I'm like, &quot;You know what, the thing is, if I just use one animal one, you guys would go, &quot;Oh! Animals are cool! I totally beleive that!&quot; So I had to use three animal ones to neutralize the animal factor.<br /> <br /> J: Neutralize <br /> <br /> R: Very smart, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you.<br /> <br /> E: Blue whales eat krill, right?<br /> <br /> S &amp; J: Yep.<br /> <br /> E: Make 'em Kriller Whales.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Kriller Whales. Blue whales are my favorite animal. You know how, when you're in 3rd grade, or whatever, you do reports on your animals and stuff? I always did the blue whale.<br /> <br /> B: Mine was spiders. <br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> John Kenneth Galbraith<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah?<br /> <br /> J: I have a quote.<br /> <br /> S: Let's hear it.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.&quot;<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: This quote was sent in by a listener named Phil Sanders. And that quote is from a man named {{w|John Kenneth Galbraith}}. And he was a Canadian / American economist and author.<br /> <br /> R: He's busy.<br /> <br /> J: Let me try to pronounce that again ... (Shouting) John Kenneth Galbraith!<br /> <br /> == Announcements &lt;small&gt;(1:19:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> R: I have a quick plug. I'm not in this, no friends are in this, but I happened to go to a press event the other day for this new show called, &quot;[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820520/ Annedroids],&quot; that's gonna be on {{w|Amazon Prime}}. As of this episode going up, it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. And it's about a little girl scientist who builds her own robots ...<br /> <br /> S: Cool!<br /> <br /> R: in her Dad's junk yard. And I met the cast and the creator, and they were all just such lovely people whose hearts are totally in the right place about encouraging science education, especially amongst little girls, and people of color, and people who are poor, and come from a variety of backgrounds. Single parent households. Like, everybody is represented in the show. And I saw the pilot; it was awesome; and I just really want the show to succeed. So, it's called Annedroids. It's on Amazon Prime. Check it out.<br /> <br /> S: Cool! And, we're gonna be at Atlanta, at {{w|DragonCon}} in September. Yep!<br /> <br /> J?: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: And then in Sydney, Australia in November, and in New Zealand in December. And we're just really busy bees ourselves. And there are some other events coming up. Once we nail down the dates we'll announce them, but we have some other things in the works. So, stay tuned for some other events coming up. Alright guys, it's good to have the crew back together.<br /> <br /> B: Yay!<br /> <br /> R: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, it's comfortable.<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, Steve!<br /> <br /> J: It's too bad that you're a GMO shill, and in bed with people who kill millions of children.<br /> <br /> S: I'm a nazi sympathizer. <br /> <br /> E: Terrible, terrible.<br /> <br /> S: And a baby eater.<br /> <br /> J: And a lackey.<br /> <br /> E: What's that say about us, who we hang around with.<br /> <br /> J: And you smell funny. Alright, well, have a good night, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: You guys all have a good night as well.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks, doc.<br /> <br /> R: Good night!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned... ==<br /> *Marie Curie had a daughter named {{w|Irene Curie}} who also went on to become a scientist.<br /> <br /> *The Russian press has been fueling conspiracy theories about flight MH-17&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118819/julia-ioffe-colbert-report Russia Fuelling Conspiracy Theories]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> *Humor helps people to cope with bad things, aids memory, and helps persuade people by weakening defensive mental barriers.<br /> <br /> *Humans can see polarized light with the naked eye in some circumstances&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Haidinger's brush}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}}<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Legal Issues &amp; Regulations = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; Education = y<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9575 2015-01-18T00:22:21Z

<p>WearSunScreen: correct to phonetic spelling</p> <hr /> <div>{{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> verified = y<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2,000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103608 study published in PLOS One]. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called Mostagedda. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The Knights of the Obsidian Order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidian to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way. No.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_473&diff=9574 2015-01-18T00:19:20Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Announcements: (1:20:33) */ Americanized spelling of defense (the rogues are American, after all).</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 473<br /> |episodeDate = August 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Fluffydinosaur1.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |rebecca = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = BN: {{w|Bill Nye}}<br /> |guest2 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no second guest --&gt;<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-02.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44275.0.html<br /> |qowText = I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey everybody<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys.<br /> <br /> S: And Evan Bernstein<br /> <br /> E: Steve, did you say it's July 29th?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct!<br /> <br /> E: As in July 29th, 1964?<br /> <br /> S: 1964?<br /> <br /> E: 50 years ago, to the day, er...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, well, this day in Skepticism, Steve Novella was born!<br /> <br /> (Rogues cheer)<br /> <br /> J: That's actually relevant too! That's really cool! Happy birthday, brother!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you so much.<br /> <br /> E: Happy birthday.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. I'm 50.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel?<br /> <br /> S: The big 5 – 0<br /> <br /> J: Holy crap.<br /> <br /> S: The Y-5-0<br /> <br /> B: Oh mother ....<br /> <br /> S: Four bits.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel? Do you feel different?<br /> <br /> S: Half a century.<br /> <br /> R: Have you bought a sports car?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, no, I'm way past my midlife crisis already.<br /> <br /> R: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: I decided to start a podcast for my midlife crisis.<br /> <br /> R: That's sad.<br /> <br /> E: Look what it's gotten you.<br /> B: You freak.<br /> <br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:11)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 2, 1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by Parliament.<br /> <br /> R: Well, you know what, you share a birthday with {{w|Greenwich Mean Time}}! Did you know that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Is that right?<br /> <br /> R: Yah!<br /> <br /> E: Awesome!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (British accent) Greenwich Mean Time, I say.<br /> <br /> R: Well, oh, wait. No, you don't, because this was August 2nd, the day this podcast comes out.<br /> <br /> B: Psyche!<br /> <br /> R: Sorry ...<br /> <br /> S: Close.<br /> <br /> E: In podcast land, you share, but not in real life.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Well, there goes my big segue. Anyway, in 1880, on August 2nd, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by the {{w|Parliament of the United Kingdom|UK Parliament}}. Which is, it's always weird to me when I think about time suddenly coming into existence. (Laughs) I mean, obviously, time has always existed, because it always requires time.<br /> <br /> E: Oh!<br /> <br /> R: (Laughs) But for a long time, each town would have it's own, particular time; and there was really no desperate need to make sure that they were all coordinated but once ...<br /> <br /> B: Train schedules!<br /> <br /> R: Train schedules were one thing, but the reason why Greenwich Mean Time was adopted when it was, was apparently more for naval navigation, and it was only standardized and used across Europe once train transportation increased. And then it wasn't until three years after it was officially adopted that the United States adopted it as well. And that was when telegraph lines first started transmitting (inaudible) &lt;!type?&gt; signals to all the cities.<br /> <br /> B: Ah-h-h...<br /> <br /> R: So, yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Cool.<br /> <br /> R: And it was adopted worldwide, November 1st, 1884.<br /> <br /> J: Cool! Very cool!<br /> <br /> R: And then there was time.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, before Greenwich was Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude. So, when sailors – as you said – sailors would set their clocks to Greenwich Time, because then they would estimate their longitude by how far they were from Greenwich, basically. Based upon, &quot;Oh, it's noon! And the sun is two hours past being directly overhead. So I must be two hours past zero longitude.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> J: (British accent) There you have it.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Mike Adams Follow Up &lt;small&gt;(3:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/07/28/fbi-turns-up-heat-on-mike-adams-as-health-ranger-fiasco-widens-plus-adams-archive/<br /> <br /> S: So, Jay, you're gonna give us a quick follow up on the whole {{w|NaturalNews|Mike Adams}} hubbub from last week.<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Ugh.<br /> <br /> S: Things are happening so fast we actually missed some important updates when we recorded the last show.<br /> <br /> J: Well, yeah, the quick summary is that Mike wrote a blog post where he compares people that support or are neutral about {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMOs}} to the {{w|Nazi Germany|Nazi regime}} and, in essence, put out a death threat against anybody that supports GMOs, saying that good people – who are anti-GMO – should kill people who are pro-GMO. And he riddled his blog post with pictures of {{w|Adolf Hitler|Hitler}}, and the Nazi party, and all the terrible things that they did, using that as ...<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Swastika#As_the_symbol_of_Nazism|Swastikas}}.<br /> <br /> J: yeah, swastikas, everything, using it as a way to convince his readers that they need to take action. Now, the big thing that he did, also, was that he requested that someone make a website that lists the offending parties, people that support GMO. And Steve, and {{w|David Gorski}}, and a ton of other journalists and news outlets were listed on this website. And then things got stranger.<br /> <br /> If that blog post wasn't strange and horrible enough, the update is that now the {{w|Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI}} is really turning up the heat on Mike, and they're investigating him. And some legitimate proof has come down the pike through web forensics that Mike is actually the person who created the listing website. Let me give you the details behind that.<br /> <br /> Now keep in mind, he supposedly requested during his blog, in the middle of his blog, for someone to create this website. Wouldn't it be convenient if somebody created this list of people that we can mark as our enemies, the big supporters of GMO, the big offenders. The &quot;people that should be killed,&quot; right? Then this website pops up very soon after, and Mike updates his blog saying, &quot;and here's a link to the website that some reader of my blog created.&quot;<br /> <br /> Turns out, Mike is that reader. It turns out that that website was created a short while before Mike actually posted his blog post calling for these people to be killed.<br /> <br /> B: Oh-h-h, nice.<br /> <br /> J: It also turns out that the formatting of the website – those two pages, specifically – Mike's page, and the listing page of the supporters of GMO have very similar formats and layout. And not just they're both using Wordpress, but similar in ways that someone looking at the code, and the &quot;forensics&quot; can determine that it's probably the same exact code base. I don't know how else to put this ... (shouting) Busted! Like, yeah, Mike, you got caught with your pants way down!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Jay, even more important, what did he say about that website before it was even proven that he was the author?<br /> <br /> J: What did he say? Well, what he did was ...<br /> <br /> B: How did he ...<br /> <br /> J: He did a series of updates on his blog. So, he's littering his blog with these updates. &quot;Update: I didn't actually, these are not my words. I didn't say to kill these people. I'm just quoting some nazi bad guy from 50 years ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: No, no, no, he was quoting the current {{w|President of Germany}}, who was talking about the {{w|Wolf's Lair|Wolf's Den}} assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler.<br /> <br /> R: Well, he said he was paraphrasing.<br /> <br /> S: ''Paraphrasing''. But then I also heard that the German president didn't actually say that.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he said, &quot;I was paraphrasing the German government.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's all irrelevant. He constructed a narrative. {{w|Monsanto}} is evil. They're like the nazis. People who are pro-GMO are paid Monsanto collaborators. They are like nazi collaborators. It was morally acceptable – in fact, an imperitive – to kill nazi collaborators. He laid it all out there. Then he makes the Monsantocollaborators website, claims somebody else did it. And then when the heat gets turned up, he has the audacity to claim, &quot;You know what? I'm beginning to think that this Monsantocollaborators website is a {{w|False flag|false flag}} operation. That Monsanto created it just to make me look like an idiot.&quot;<br /> <br /> And then it turns out, as Jay was pointing out, that &lt;I&gt;he&lt;/I&gt; made the website! So he's pretty much busted in a flat out lie. And there's no other way to really interpret it in my mind.<br /> <br /> J: He didn't have ...<br /> <br /> E: What'd he think?<br /> <br /> J: Well, Evan, what he thought was ...<br /> <br /> E: How could he not think he was not gonna get caught?<br /> <br /> J: In his stupor of hatred, he really thought that he was gonna incite people to take some type of action. Now, I can't say – I can only speculate – and this is, of course, all in my opinion. I honestly don't know if Mike actually wanted people like my brother, Steve, and for David Gorski to get killed. I don't know. But he really made it seem crystal clear that that was the message. That truly was the message.<br /> <br /> E: And, where's the mainstream media on all of this? You know, I'm seeing a lot of writings from people in skeptical circles, science circles, and so forth, but I've not seen it on {{w|ABC News|ABC}}. I have not seen it on {{w|CNN}}. I've not seen it in any of those places.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it would be interesting if it did get wider mainstream coverage, but, we'll see.<br /> <br /> E: He gets plenty of coverage in other ways, all in positive ways.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's true.<br /> <br /> E: On {{w|The Oprah Winfrey Show|Oprah}}, and {{w|The Dr. Oz Show|Dr. Oz}}, and all these ...<br /> <br /> S: The best thing is though, that the FBI is investigating. He crossed a line, where now the FBI is looking into this. So, if they could get access to information to not just strongly suggest, but to actually prove that Mike Adams was behind the Monsantocollaborators website, then he is &lt;I&gt;legally&lt;/I&gt; busted; then he is totally busted. And, I don't know! I don't know how much the law allows for the FBI ... what actions to take against him.<br /> <br /> Either he was deliberately inciting to murder, or this was reckless endangerment. Then, at the very least, his reputation should be in tatters. And that's the one thing that we could most help with, is to make sure everybody remembers ... he should never live this down in my opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Never, ever! Well, we're never gonna let people forget it.<br /> <br /> R: Indeed.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, let's move on. Enough time on this guy.<br /> <br /> === Battery Advance &lt;small&gt;(9:44)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/scientists-approach-holy-grail-of-battery-technology-but-is-it-more-of-a-holey-grail<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about (sarcastic excitement) an exciting new advance in battery technology! Finally! Because we've never had this before!<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yes, another one! (Evan laughs) So ...<br /> <br /> R: It's always 5 to 10 years away, so, has it been 5 to 10 years?<br /> <br /> E: Since we last spoke about this one!<br /> <br /> B: So, scientists have apparently come very close to what some have called the holy grail of battery technology, and that's the phrase that got me. When I see holy grail ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh!<br /> <br /> B: in anything related to science, I perk up. I'm like, &quot;Alright, what the hell is going on here?&quot; Especially battery technology. We need a damn holy grail. So, {{w|Lithium-ion battery|lithium-ion batteries}}, they're one of the premier – I'm sure everyone's heard of them – they're one of the premier, most popular batteries for portable, and rechargeable consumer electronics. They've got many, many very good qualities, excellent energy density. They only slowly lose charge when they're not being used. There's no {{w|memory effect}}, which is kind of an often-abused term.<br /> <br /> Memory effect was used specifically to apply to {{w|Nickel-cadmium battery|nickel cadmium}}, and {{w|Nickel-metal hydride battery|nickel-metal hyride batteries}}. And it had to do with the fact that if you charge one of those batteries before it was fully discharged, then it would slowly decrease the amount of battery life that you would have.<br /> <br /> E: Oh-h! Yeah, you remember that? What a pain! Having to cycle your batteries, and stuff? What a pain.<br /> <br /> B: Right. So, lithium-ion does not suffer from that at all, although they do suffer, of course, from just general age-related issues that are just so annoying, so much so that it's one of the most common complaints about smart phones. So, battery life is still an issue, and not just for smartphones, obviously. There's so many things, cars especially.<br /> <br /> So, for a long time now, scientists have been trying to create a lithium-ion battery that has more lithium, actually in it. So, before I go on, I just got to cover real fast the basic battery components. All batteries need to have three of these things here, these three things.<br /> <br /> An {{w|electrolyte}}, which is basically just a source of electrons. An {{w|anode}}, which dispenses the electrons. And a {{w|cathode}}, which receives them. You need those three. You don't have those three, you pretty much don't have a battery.<br /> <br /> So, lithium-ion batteries have {{w|lithium}} in the electrolyte, which is good, but the anode is only partially lithium. It's not fully lithium. And an all-lithium anode would in fact be a huge improvement because it would allow for things like, it would be much lighter, it would be more energy-dense, and those are two of, I would say, the top three or four most desired qualities of these types of batteries.<br /> <br /> They've had problems though, with these fully lithiumized anodes – I don't think that's a word. Anodes made of lithium expand much more than any other material, and it causes cracks to form in the anode, releasing ions. And these ions create stringy {{w|Dendrite (metal)|dendrites}}, they call 'em, that shorten the battery life. There's chemical reactions between the electrolyte and the anode, and that depletes some of the electrolyte. It shortens the battery life. And, I'm sure you've all heard, of course, of the fire hazards that can happen because of this, because it gets so hot.<br /> <br /> So dealing with these exact issues is precisely what the researchers from {{w|Stanford University}} reporting in – what was it – the {{w|Nature Nanotechnology|Journal of Nature and Nanotechnology}}. Now, they're not quite there yet – how predictable is that – but they do seem to be extremely close. Close enough, I think, that I think it's not premature at all to publish about it, because it is an interesting advance.<br /> <br /> So what they did was create a coating for the anode that's made of these super-tiny carbon nanospheres. So, the nanospheres protect the anode, and prevent all these drawbacks that I've just mentioned. The ratio of lithium, the anode pushes out to the amount put in during a charge cycle is at 99%. So, you get that? That's called the [http://depts.washington.edu/matseed/batteries/MSE/definitions.html Coulombic efficiency]. But it needs to be 99.9% before it's really commercially viable.<br /> <br /> But this is really such a little difference that I think they should be able to make minor improvements, tweak it, and they'll be able to bring it up to snuff with hopefully not a huge amount of effort 'cause clearly, this fundamental concept is far superior to any of the previous attempts that have been made with a fully lithium anode, so that's really cool.<br /> <br /> Clearly, I think this is a really fantastic advance with much promise, but I do have a few problems. First of all, it's battery technology! We hear about advances, like Steve said, all the time! And then bam – nothing! I read article after article that sounds like a fantastic idea. &quot;Wow! This is really gonna change things!&quot; And then, that's like, literally, the last thing I hear about it. And that's generally because there's like, these key battery factors, and one of them or more will invariably fail. Whether it's the scalability, the cost, the recharging cycles; there's always something – a key thing – that is missing that prevents a lot of these things from just really taking off.<br /> <br /> Related to that is the fact that they're not quite at their goal yet, right? They're close, but often, going that last yard, or 9/10ths of a percent in this case, that's often the big problem, right? The last little bit is like, &quot;Damn, we can't quite get it.&quot; And who knows what kind of problems they could encounter that would prevent them from going even that little bit extra. I don't know enough about battery technology to really say what the stumbling blocks could be, although they are confident. But, big deal, everybody's confident.<br /> <br /> And then, finally, like I mentioned earlier, and most annoying to me, was that they described this as a holy grail of battery technology. But, I read a lot of news items on this, and a lot of these reports were saying that the technology could extend the battery life 2 to 3 times!<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's nice.<br /> <br /> B: That's really nice!<br /> <br /> S: It's incremental though.<br /> <br /> B: Holy grail? The holy grail is not incremental. That's a great way to say it. And they even said that affordable electric cars with a 300 mile range. Wait, whoa! $25,000 electric car, 300 mile range? Aren't we close to 300 miles now? If it could go 6, 7, 800, now you're talking!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think you're right, Bob. This is a potential incremental advance in lithium-ion battery technology – hardly worth the hype that they're giving it. And you're also right ... I mean, I literally see a news item about like this every week. I mean, &lt;I&gt;weekly&lt;/I&gt; there is some new press release about some new potential way of eeking more out of a lithium-ion battery. Some sound greater than this in potential.<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, that's right! Some of them, there's even more problems ...<br /> <br /> S: About a year or two ago, I read about using nano-structuring the lithium, and getting ten times the capacity out of it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: But then there's this little problem with how much can be discharged. So, the {{w|discharger}} is a little on the slow end to be actually useful for anything, but ... or, whatever. As you say, it's always something like that, because there's so many potential fatal deal killers with battery technology, that you have to have all your ducks in a row, or it's just a nice lab experiment.<br /> <br /> The other category, that it's like, literally every week, there's an amazing breakthrough, is the solar cell technology. Same thing.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes, yes, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: And they're just talking about some incremental advance in one aspect of the many possible things. And, you know, the thing about solar technology is that it &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; incrementally advancing. Each, every year, we're a little bit better. Okay, but the hype that comes with it now is just incredible.<br /> <br /> B: Right, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again: These types of technologies, batteries and solar {{w|photovoltaics}}, or just solar energy in general, these are the types of things that, god, if I had a trillion dollars laying around, this is the stuff that needs a {{w|Manhattan Project}}. Billions ... because these are the things that will impact and help the entire world just in one fell swoop!<br /> <br /> E: I don't know. Are they gonna come eventually? The whole time for 9+ years we've been talking about this is, it's always been small, incremental stage. Isn't it just the nature of this particular science that this is how it's gonna be, and ...<br /> <br /> S: It's the nature of many sciences. But Evan brings up a good point too, Bob. We may never have that one advance that gives us the 10 time improvement, the order of magnitude. It may be we just need the 2 to 3 times advance that's actually really good when you think about it. And you stack a few of those together, and then you're there. You know?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's fine. But, hey, we can speed up those incremental advances, can't we?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right?<br /> <br /> === Ray Comfort's Gravity Gaffe &lt;small&gt;(18:13)&lt;/small&gt; === <br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ray-comforts-gravity-gaffe<br /> <br /> <br /> S: But, Evan, do you think {{w|Ray Comfort}} can wrap his head around advances in battery and solar technology?<br /> <br /> B: Nice.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, are you kidding? He is Mr. Science. Move over, {{w|Bill Nye}}; get out of the way {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}}; Ray Comfort is here! Evangelical Minister, author, video producer, perhaps best known for the so-called [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Banana_fallacy banana falacy], in which he claimed that the perfection of the design of the banana is an example of God's hand in creation. Yes.<br /> <br /> B: Too bad &lt;I&gt;we&lt;/I&gt; designed the {{w|Cavendish banana subgroup|Cavendish banana}}.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Irrelevant! Not in the Bible.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: So, on July 26th, he threw this pearl of wisdom before his swine - (Bob laughs) - his Facebook readers. &quot;If the Bible isn't God-inspired, explain why ... how the writer of the {{w|Book of Job}} knew 3000 years ago that, 'The Earth hangs upon nothing.'&quot; And that's Job, chapter 26, verse 7? Is that how that works?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: And then he writes, &quot;It wasn't until thousands of years later that science discovered that gravity doesn't exist in space, and that this massive Earth does indeed hang upon nothing.&quot; He later went back and revised that a bit to read, that gravity doesn't exist in space as it does on Earth, and that this massive Earth does, indeed, hang upon nothing. So, essentially he kind of said the same thing.<br /> <br /> You know what this reminded me? So, remember those old commercials from the 70's for {{w|E. F. Hutton &amp; Co.|E.F. Hutton}}? Right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen. So, I'm gonna borrow that, and say, &quot;When Ray Comfort talks about science, skeptics listen, and then correct him!&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Not before laughing.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly. You have to laugh at first about this stuff, and then you can get serious. I laughed when I read one Twitterer who put this out there. He said, &quot;First of all, the Earth doesn't hang, for a start. It's not the bloody family portrait.&quot; (Laughs) Which, I love that picture about, that's exactly ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's a Christmas ornament!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Exactly, right?<br /> <br /> B: It's! In! Orbit!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Yeah, and you can't help yourself. Anywhere you start with this, you're gonna wind up correcting him, so there's really nowhere to go wrong here. So, {{w|Gravitation|gravity}} is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It's one of the four {{w|Fundamental interaction|fundamental forces}} of nature along with {{w|electromagnetism}}, and the nuclear {{w|Strong interaction|strong force}}, and the {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}! And the phenomenon of gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of {{w|spacetime}}.<br /> <br /> But Comfort was under the impression that there's no gravity in space, hence the reason why astronauts appear to float around as they do. But there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; gravity throughout the universe, right? The entire {{w|Observable universe|visible universe}} has revealed the wonders of gravity in all of space and time, and there's just boatloads of evidence to support it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, the entire structure of the known universe is basically authored by gravity. It's the most far-reaching force there is! It's like, hello!<br /> <br /> E: So, obviously, a lot of people chimed in on this, both supporters of his, and people who actually understand science, in making legitimate attempts to correct him. You know, amongst the giggles and things.<br /> <br /> So, he went ahead and corrected himself, a few hours later. Basically, here's what he said, &quot;Up until today, I was one of the ''many'' who believe there's zero gravity in space. We live and learn. Thanks to the many {{w|atheism|atheists}} who kindly corrected me.&quot; But then, he actually goes on by also saying, &quot;{{w|Isaac Newton|Sir Isaac Newton}} is the one -&quot; I'm cutting this short because it's kind of a long post. But he writes, &quot;Sir Isaac Newton is the one who so wisely noted atheism is so senseless. I will therefore try to make it a little clearer for those folks who pretend that God doesn't exist. While there is invisible gravity in space -so much for seeing is believing – this massive Earth hangs on nothing. It has no visible means of support, similar to the no means of support backing {{w|Darwinism|Darwinian evolution}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: He was wrong, but he's still right! Even though he was completely wrong. It's just unbelievable. It's astounding. He is absolutely {{w|Scientific literacy|scientifically illiterate}}. I think we could state that without fearing contradiction.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Very kind.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, he thought there was no gravity in space. You have to have absolutely no effing idea what's going on if you think that. You don't understand the first thing about physics and astronomy, right? And it's fine if somebody's not interested in science, and just doesn't have any idea about things like that, the {{w|Sherri Shepherd|Sherri Shepherds}} of the world, but he takes it a step further. In his abject ignorance of science, he uses that as a basis in order to critize ...<br /> <br /> J: To speculate! He's speculating without any ...<br /> <br /> S: No, not speculating, Jay! He's saying definitively, &quot;Hey! If the Bible isn't inspired by God, explain &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; atheists!&quot; But he's talking totally about his own complete, abject, scientific illiteracy.<br /> <br /> J: And clearly, he's unmoved, when he finds out what the truth is, like we said. No effect! Sorry! Doesn't care. That's the infuriating part of it. Okay, so, he starts off wrong. Okay, he's wrong. Then a lot of people showed him, &quot;This is what the truth is,&quot; and then he finally swallowed that, and then ... doesn't care! Didn't affect him in any way!<br /> <br /> S: Because he's not basing his beliefs on facts or logic or evidence or anything. He's {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} facts that appear to support his position. And when that's wrong, that doesn't matter! He'll just cherry pick &lt;I&gt;other&lt;/I&gt; facts. Like, he went on, &quot;Oh yeah! But gravity's invisible! So much for seeing is believing!&quot; What! It's a total {{w|Non sequitur (logic)|non sequitur}}. Even just, his interpretation of the Job passage, &quot;The Earth hangs upon nothing.&quot; That's meaningless.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> S: It doesn't even have any scientific meaning. It was written by somebody who didn't know the first thing about cosmology or physics, or astronomy.<br /> <br /> E: I liken him taking the Job quote so far out of context, this is the same way the things {{w|Nostradamus}} &quot;predicted&quot; way back when, and applying that to modern times is, there's no connection whatsoever! They have no idea basically ...<br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Feathers &lt;small&gt;(24:17)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/most-dinosaurs-may-have-had-feathers<br /> <br /> S: To finish up the news items, just two quick topics on dinosaurs. I love talking about dinosaurs. The first one has to do with how many dinosaurs probably had feathers. This has been a very fascinating story from our childhood. Rebecca, I think even you, when you were a kid, right, dinosaurs had tough, leathery skin, right? You never saw dinosaurs with feathers.<br /> <br /> But, of course, since really, {{w|Archaeopteryx}}, over a hundred years ago, the idea was that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Archeopteryx looks pretty much half dinosaur, half bird. Since then, especially since the 1980's, we've discovered a lot of feathered dinosaurs, so it wasn't just this one feathered half dinosaur, there was an entire clade, a group, of dinosaurs like {{w|Velociraptor|Velociraptors}}, et cetera, that had feathers of some type, as well as different flying dinosaurs, and other ones that had feathers but couldn't fly, and primitive birds; it's really been fleshed out tremendously.<br /> <br /> But the question remains, is how far back in the dinosaur evolutionary history do feathers go? Feathered dinosaurs are mainly found among the {{w|Theropoda|Theropods}}, which are in the branch of dinosaurs called the {{w|Saurischia|saurischians}} – which, ironically means lizard-hipped – whereas the other branch of dinosaurs, the ones that did not give rise to the birds, are the {{w|Ornithischia|ornithischians}}, which means bird-hip.<br /> <br /> B: Ha!<br /> <br /> S: But, in any case...<br /> <br /> B: How ironic is that?<br /> <br /> S: The theropods are the feathered dinosaurs. So, pretty much, at this point, we can say most theropod dinosaurs probably had feathers at some point in their life, even if it was just {{w|Down feather|downy feathers}} as young, and they may not have survived until adulthood.<br /> <br /> But recently, scientists have discovered what look like primitive feather impressions on the fossil of a neo-ornithischian dinosaur. In other words, from the other main group of dinosaurs. The common anscestor of the ornithischians and the saurichians is basically the common anscestor of all dinosaurs. Now, do you understand the implication of that?<br /> <br /> J: No!<br /> <br /> E: We have to rename dinosaurs.<br /> <br /> S: It means that all dinosaurs may have had feathers, every single dinosaur ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: It may actually go all the way back to the early days of the dinosaurs ...<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a clade.<br /> <br /> B: That's amazing. Did anybody ever even come close to even predicting this?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's incredible.<br /> <br /> B: That's fantastic.<br /> <br /> S: So, this is one fossil, I have to always say. We hate to .. you don't want to hang your hat on one piece of evidence. So, it would be nice if we could find other fossils. It's possible that these feathery filaments were only exist in a juvenile, and not adults. So, it may be that all dinosaurs had down as chicks, as baby dinosaurs, but not as adults. But still, the idea that a feather-like {{w|Integument|integumentary}} adaptation is common to most or all dinosaurs is amazing. So, if this holds up, if this turns out to be the case, that would be fascinating.<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, weren't some of the feathers ... were unique. I mean, these are feathers they had never seen before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Completely, very different structure, whatever. And also, the article, the research I read made a good comparison. They said all dinosaurs had some type of feather, just like all mammals have some type of hair, which is a nice comparison. But, they also made an interesting point. I mean, you look at an elephant - and an elephant's a mammal - not much hair going on on an elephant. There is some.<br /> <br /> So they think for the largest predators, they probably had very, very sparse feathers, if any, really, at all. Which makes sense, because they don't really need them for ...<br /> <br /> S: Temperature control.<br /> <br /> B: ... temperature control. So, I wouldn't run around thinking that, oh, {{w|Tyrannosaurus|T-Rexes}} were running around with feathers everywhere, type of thing. But who knows?<br /> <br /> S: But, it does mean that there is this potential for feather-like structures in dinosaurs as an entire clade ...<br /> <br /> B: Right.<br /> <br /> S: And think about that. So, this is getting back to the whole evidence for evolution thing. If evolution were not true, what are the odds that the group that are anatomically birds probably derived from, also had the potential ... the widespread potential to grow feather-like structures? This is exactly the kind of thing you would predict from evolution. And there's absolutely no reason for it without evolution as a unifying theory.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah. <br /> <br /> B: Steve, I know that these dinosaurs, what they found, these fossils are very special because I think they died in a lake bed, and they were very quickly covered up with a light volcanic silt, or whatever. So, that's why the resolution is so fine. But still, I can't help but thinking, &quot;You know, how many fossils have we dug up, and there was no hint of any type of feather structures on any of the big boys that all these thousands ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, for feather impressions, you need the right kind of conditions as you were saying, Bob. So this is, it may be a rare window. So, we just have to hope ... and also, this dinosaur was found outside of China, so it's the first feathered dinosaur found outside of China, which is also important. So, if we find more in various groups, and in various locations around the world. The more we find, the more evidence there is that really, all dinosaurs had some kind of potential for feathers. Or, you know, when we say, &quot;feathers,&quot; these could all just be monofilaments. They're not necessarily the fully-formed shafted feather that we ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> J: So you consider it an early feather, then, right?<br /> <br /> S: Like a downy feather, oh yeah. Or, it's also probably not on, saying, &quot;early&quot; implies that it later evolved into a bird-like feather, but it probably didn't. You know what I mean? This is in a completely separate branch. These monofilaments probably never became anything that you would think of as a feather. But it's clearly a feather-like appendage, or structure. <br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Extinction &lt;small&gt;(30:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dinosaur-extinction-revisited/<br /> <br /> S: The other dinosaur news item, this is another topic about, which I have been fascinated ever since I was a child. And that is, what wiped out the dinosaurs? Now, everybody knows the answer to this, right? What killed off the dinosaurs?<br /> <br /> R: Inability to brush their teeth, 'cause of their tiny, tiny arms.<br /> <br /> S: (Suppresses laughter) Right, exactly. The {{w|Chicxulub crater}} asteroid from 66 million years ago<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's what we said.<br /> <br /> S: at the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary. So, there's no question that 66 million years ago, a huge meteor – or a {{w|bolide}}, as they call it – whacked into the Earth at Chicxulub ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wait, Steve. Sorry, Steve. Now, bolide, isn't that a more generic term that can account for {{w|Asteroid|asteroids}} &lt;I&gt;and&lt;/I&gt; {{w|Comet|comets}}?<br /> <br /> S: Yes, because they don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, alright.<br /> <br /> S: They don't know, it was a bolide. They don't really know it was a meteor.<br /> <br /> E: And you didn't call it the K-T boundary, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: It's no longer the K-T boundary. Now it's the K-Pg extinction for {{w|Paleogene}}.<br /> <br /> J: And why didn't they send me an email when they changed that?<br /> <br /> S: I know, right? I didn't get the memo either; I just had to read it. So, anyway, it's actually more of a controversy than I was aware of until maybe a couple of years ago. I started to realize this is actually a little more controversial, that the meteor impact 66 million years ago was pretty much the main cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Paleontology|paleontologists}} are still debating among themselves whether or not dinosaurs as a group were already on the way out. One question is did the dinosaurs survive past the K-Pg boundary. I think that has been pretty much put to bed, and the answer is no. That no dinosaur survived past the K-Pg boundary. So, clearly, that is the punctuation mark at the end of dinosaurs' time on Earth. But the question is, were they already in decline, and on their way out, and was the asteroid or the bolide just the {{w|Coup de grâce|coup de grâce}}, that it was the final blow that wiped them out.<br /> <br /> B: That's the essense of the controversy right there.<br /> <br /> S: That's the controversy, that's it. Was it solely responsible, or was it just one among many factors. The other factors that paleontologists discuss are, 1, there were fluctuating sea levels at that time; 2, there was a fluctuating climate at that time in terms of the temperature of the Earth; and 3, and probably the biggest one, is the volcanism and the {{w|Deccan Traps}} located in India. They were massively volcanically active; poisoning the atmosphere, changing the climate; and that could put a lot of stress on dinosaurs and other large animals at the time.<br /> <br /> So, remember at the K-Pg extinction, all large {{w|Vertebrate}} groups, dinosaurs, {{w|Pleisiosauria|Pleisiosaurs}}, {{w|Mosasaur|mosasaurs}}, and {{w|Pterosaur|Pterosaurs}} went extinct, as did many species of {{w|Plankton}}, tropical invertebrates, and reef dwellers. So, it was a widespread extinction. {{w|Mammal|Mammals}}, birds, and insects actually did quite well. They did fine.<br /> <br /> It definitely wasn't something that was unique to dinosaurs. The reason we're talking about this now is a recent review of all existing evidence, trying to address this specific question of were the dinosaurs in decline prior to the meteor impact. And the answer to that is mostly no. A careful review of the evidence shows that there essentially is no significant scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the dinosaurs were in decline at the time the meteor hit. And, therefore, the meteor probably the primary, if not the sole cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> B: That's good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah,<br /> <br /> B: I like it.<br /> <br /> S: What you thought all along turns out to be true, and you can now comfortably ignore this controversy you didn't know about. But, the authors do hold out one tiny little exception.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god, what now?<br /> <br /> J: Oh boy!<br /> <br /> S: There was a slight decline in the species richness of North American ornithischians, but not therapods. So, there was a regional decline in one type of dinosaurs, mainly plant-eaters, the ornithischians. And they said, &quot;Maybe that made dinosaurs more vulnerable to extinction – to the collapse of their ecosystem.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, what's interesting is that that one tiny, little speculation is what the media ran with. And the headlines – even on sites that are normally very good, like {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature News}}, and the {{w|BBC}} – are reporting it as, &quot;The dinosaurs died because of bad luck.&quot; One even said that if the meteor had hit several million years earlier or later, the dinosaurs would have survived. That is &lt;I&gt;not&lt;/I&gt; what the paper concludes.<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: The paper concludes there was basically no decline in dinosaurs, and the meteor wiped them out. And then there was this one little, &quot;Yeah, okay, but the ornithischians were a little bit in decline in North America only, and maybe that made them more vulnerable. We see this pattern all the time, this ... half of what caught my interest with this story because I read the headline, I'm like, &quot;Wow! Really? That's pretty unusual.&quot; And then I read the paper, it's like, the paper's not saying this!<br /> <br /> The main evidence is not what the headlines go for. They pick out some little, tiny, little post script, but that's the thing that has the sexy headline. The dinosaurs died from bad luck! <br /> <br /> B: Holy crap!<br /> <br /> E: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> B: That's pathetic. Fail!<br /> <br /> S: Total fail. Total fail reporting this story. Just the way it gets translated is just unbelievable. And you know, it also shows, you gotta go ... if I just read the press releases, that's the impression I would have walked away with. But you got to go to the original source. You read the paper, and it's like ... I read the whole paper. Because the paper actually is fascinating.<br /> <br /> Anyone who's interested in this topic, the controversy over the extinction of the dinosaurs, this paper is an awesome primer. It goes over everything really well. And then in the discussion, it's very clear, that other than this one tiny exception, the evidence does not support any kind of general decline in dinosaurs as a group prior to the impact of the meteor.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(36:51)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> * Answer to last week: Dot Matrix Printer<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, Who's that Noisy?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, last week's Who's the Noisy, you remember this little tune? Remember this little turn? Remember this? Yeah.<br /> <br /> (Scratchy sound playing {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> S: Heh, that's awesome.<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Evan, can I ask you a question?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, sir.<br /> <br /> J: When we recorded the show last week, did I guess correctly?<br /> <br /> E: Jay, you did guess correctly. You were the first one!<br /> <br /> B: Jay, it seems so obvious now. (Laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Jay, tell us what that was!<br /> <br /> J: Tell us what you've won! That is the old {{w|Dot matrix printing|dot matrix printers}}.<br /> <br /> E: Remember those, dot matrix!<br /> <br /> J: Yes, so the drum beat is the actual feed of the paper. And then the notes, somebody figured out, I guess, a way to print different things with it, you can get different frequencies out of it.<br /> <br /> S: You could watch the whole thing on [http://youtu.be/u8I6qt_Z0Cg YouTube]<br /> <br /> J: Oh, okay. I didn't do that. I didn't cheat.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I mean, after Evan confirmed that, yes, it was a dot-matrix printer, I watched the whole thing on YouTube, and you could see what it's printing. You know, it's just dots. It's not text or anything.<br /> <br /> J: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: A dot-matrix printer?<br /> <br /> S: It does the whole song really well. It's very funny to watch.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> E: It is, and of course, you know, these things are not purposed to create music or stuff. But, hey, give people toys or technology, and they'll do all sorts of things with it that it wasn't supposed to do, though!<br /> <br /> S: They have far too much time on their hands.<br /> <br /> E: I suppose, so ...<br /> <br /> B: I love people like that! I love 'em!<br /> <br /> E: And it generated a ton of email, people having enjoyed that, realizing exactly what it was, expressing their own little comments about it, it was really cool to read. I spent a lot of time this week, 'cause there were hundreds of correct answers. But there can only be one winner each week. Rob McDermit, your name was chosen. Congratulations, you are this week's winner.<br /> <br /> And I want to send out a thank you to Liam Bond, who's also a listener, who actually sent me the link for this particular noisy, from last week. So, thank you, Liam. I appreciate that.<br /> <br /> S: Awesome. And what do you got for this week?<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this week, here's a voice you may recognize. You might not, but it's interesting nonetheless. Here we go.<br /> <br /> ?: (Male voice) I went nuts! I just didn't know what happened. I just lost it, and I just became a poor actor in New York. Like being a star student at {{w|Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT}}. I don't know. You tell me. I just ... crazy, I suppose. Swedish ... I don't know how to explain it.<br /> <br /> E: And, go ahead and submit your answer. Correct or not, we don't care. We want to hear from you. wtn@theskepticsguide.org is our email address. Or you can go ahead and post it on our forums, [http://sguforums.com sguforums.com]. Look for the sub thread called Who's that Noisy for episode 473. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, Evan.<br /> <br /> == Interview With Bill Nye &lt;small&gt;(41:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * http://billnye.com/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we recorded a really fun interview with Bill Nye the Science Guy while we were at {{w|The Amaz!ng Meeting|TAM}}. So, we're gonna play some of that interview for you now!<br /> <br /> (Music plays)<br /> <br /> S: We're here at TAM 2014, and it's our distinct pleasure to have with us back again, Bill Nye, the Science Guy! Bill, welcome back to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> BN: It's so good to be back.<br /> <br /> S: So, Bill, I asked you before we started if you wouldn't mind if we asked you about the {{w|Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate|Ham debate}}. I'm sure everyone's asking you about that. So, tell us how you feel. How did that go? Would you do it again? What do you think?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, it went great, for me, or us. I don't think I'd do it again because I don't know how much more ground there is to cover. However, I remind us that the audience is not Ken Ham, or Ken Ham's congregation, or ministry, as he calls it. The audience is everybody on the web. So, 3 and a half million views. And that's seriously, that's just in the first – what's it been – four months. It'll, I presume, just keep getting bigger and bigger.<br /> <br /> Everywhere I go, people watched it! I'm getting my shoes shined today in the {{w|McCarran International Airport|McCarran Airport}}. This guy, through a half dozen people. &quot;Loved the debate, man! Way to go!&quot; People I've not dealt with yet are, &quot;I hate you! You suck!&quot; And they're coming. But I haven't met many of them yet.<br /> <br /> S: I think that – we all watched the debate, of course – I mean, we ...<br /> <br /> J: It was so cool!<br /> <br /> S: It was cool!<br /> <br /> BN: It's so nice of you guys!<br /> <br /> B: It was an event! Come on!<br /> <br /> S: I love debates. I mean, personally. A lot of people in our movement are really shy about debates, but I think they're great. So, you did a fabulous job. I think, what you did really well, to be honest with you, was you just stuck to science communicating, and you just told the science end of the spectrum really well. And I think that might have, in the end ... I think some people were worried you weren't addressing Ham's points, but he doesn't really have any points.<br /> <br /> BN: I was gonna say, what is it beyond that he's got a book?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you're better off just saying, this is the science, and isn't it cool, and let's all really be enthusiastic about science. And maybe that was actually the best approach to go.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I thought the most important thing, as I will say today many times, you may be right, if I'm not right. The most important thing is to keep your cool. Keep my cool. Because these guys say such extraordinary things. It's just ...<br /> <br /> S: Easy to lose your head.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: Bill, how did you prepare for the debate?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, that's a great question. And thank you for asking.<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> BN: So, first of all, I was overconfident. Then I got to thinking about it, and I was terrified.<br /> <br /> (Loud laughter)<br /> <br /> B: It's probably healthy.<br /> <br /> BN: Then, I went to see {{w|Eugenie Scott}}, and you guys know [http://ncse.com/users/josh Josh Rosenau]? He's the second in command there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, okay, alright.<br /> <br /> BN: He's the head of resear- he's very good. And they really coached me, along with several other people from {{w|National Center for Science Education}}.<br /> <br /> S: 'Genie's a sci, by the way. She's here.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, and I want to see her talk! Or hear her ... Wait, I'll do both. (Rogues laugh) So she really coached me. And then, do you guys know {{w|Donald Prothero|Don Prothero}}?<br /> <br /> E: Oh, absolutely, yes. Good man.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I made good. I told him I'd buy him dinner; and I bought him dinner night before last. He really helped out. And {{w|Michael Shermer}}. We met for lunch at Michael's house, and those people really coached me. And then I did some research. I mean I spent a little time. And one thing has led to another, and I'm writing a book. I mean, I've written a book. 89,000 words. And it comes out the first week of November.<br /> <br /> J: This is about the whole experience.<br /> <br /> BN: It's about, nah, it's just called, &quot;Evolution: The Science of Creation.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ooh! That's a great title!<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, I'll show ya.<br /> <br /> E: Nice turn.<br /> <br /> BN: In my slide show – it's all about me-e-e. (Rogues laugh) I have the cover, which I got yesterday, Thursday. I got, they sent the latest version of the cover. It's a JPEG.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: So, this is really exciting, but I mention this for me, for us, we have this whole thing. We're always preaching to the choir. But don't you feel like it's growing?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, no question.<br /> <br /> S: I don't like the term &quot;preaching to the choir.&quot; We're educating people who are interested in science and critical thinking.<br /> <br /> BN: And the other thing is, this thing that we all humans are so kooky for, it's a community. That's what TAM's all about, right? Like, you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking? Wow! What a relief, right? As I say, this wouldn't matter except for kids. By kids, I mean students, science students. And that's why it's really important to me. We cannot raise a generation of students who are scientifcally illiterate, and without critical thinking skill, and so I feel that that debate really has done that. Now, a lot of people thought I shouldn't do it.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a lot of skeptics said it.<br /> <br /> E: Because there's reasons why. We've seen historical instances in which the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish#Debates Gish Gallop] has been employed by some of these people, and they run roughshod over ...<br /> <br /> BN: Let me just ask you guys, because it is all about (whispers) ''me.''<br /> <br /> B: We don't deny that! We agree with you with that.<br /> <br /> BN: What did I not screw up? I mean, I did it the way I was gonna do it.<br /> <br /> S: My take was what I said already. It was one strategy to just ignore him, and just to make the case for science and evolution. That's actually a good strategy, because once you're on the defensive, you lose because he can create misconceptions in seconds that would take you dozens of minutes to correct. So just forget him.<br /> <br /> So that's one approach. It's kind of like the non-debate debate. The art of fighting without fighting.<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: So ... I also totally agree, because I get this question a lot. I'm just in the middle of a debate with a {{w|9/11 Truth movement|9/11 Truther}}. People would be like, &quot;Why are you doing this?&quot; It's like, he's not the audience! I don't care about him. I am talking to people who want information, who are on the fence who will be compelled by this. And I'm gonna teach them some critical thinking and facts!<br /> <br /> BN: Or just the doubt's introduced to their minds. That's the big thing.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, the one thing our listeners will be very upset about if we don't bring this up, though. The one criticism that does come up is, &quot;But Ham exploited this to raise money for his ...&quot;<br /> <br /> BN: Here's my claim.<br /> <br /> S: You tell me.<br /> <br /> BN: It's not over yet.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> BN: So, he held an online press conference. I don't know if you guys watched that.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't.<br /> <br /> BN: And there's no members of the press at a press conference in {{w|Answers in Genesis}}, it's all their own guys.<br /> <br /> B: Is that afterwards, or before?<br /> <br /> BN: Afterwards, weeks later. So, two things. I got a letter saying that the debate did not influence it at all from a Mark Looy, who's second in command at Answers in ... maybe he's actually the head of Answers in Genesis. And saying it had no influence at all. And then they had this press conference saying it was the wind that blew ... but journalists in {{w|Kentucky}} are looking hard into this. They're trying to follow the money. And I have heard two people who've looked at the {{w|Irs_tax_forms#Fiduciary_reporting|990's}}, you know what I mean?<br /> <br /> Now, this is hearsay, you guys, this is the worst form of evidence. But he may – and this is may, not verified yet, they are trying to find out – but he may have leveraged the loan for the Arc Park against the {{w|Creation Museum}}, and you know, his attendance is going down.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: Because it's generally believed that his attendance is going down because he doesn't have new exhibits. This is in museum talk. So, what I did, you guys, I didn't give money to (inaudible), but I took the money from the debate, and I gave it to a planetary society.<br /> <br /> E: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: And I also gave it to the Kentucky Museum of Science, or maybe it's called {{w|Kentucky Science Center|Kentucky Children's Museum}}, and the {{w|Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal|Cincinnati Museum of Science}}. You know, trying to bracket him. So, it's not ... in other words, I will say, in the short term, you may be right. But in the medium term, I think he's gonna have a lot of trouble.<br /> <br /> E: The final reckoning is not in yet.<br /> <br /> BN: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's only June of the first few months, people!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> S: That's long though, attention span, for the public.<br /> <br /> BN: What'd you say? I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Gotcha for a second.<br /> <br /> BN: Hilarious!<br /> <br /> J: My only critique, is that you could have structured the debate to handle one or two topics, and had a moderator keep people on topic, which ... but I totally agree with Steve. After watching the debate, we were ... definitely more than once, you did such a good job, of just being ...<br /> <br /> E: Love you man!<br /> <br /> J: Well, you insulated yourself! You were immune to him just going off on these insane tangents <br /> <br /> BN: He was galloping gishy wash.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: He was trying, he tried. But overall, I just had a conversation with people an hour ago about this. What was the net result? I'm not sure. I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: It's hard to measure, but ...<br /> <br /> J: It is hard to measure.<br /> <br /> S: I certainly think I encountered a lot of people who like, excited about science because I saw you on that debate.<br /> <br /> BN: That's so nice!<br /> <br /> S: That's a win!<br /> <br /> BN: I've met several science teachers, and of course, this is a self-selecting group, who use it in class. They say they've played it in class, this spring.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> BN: Wow, yeah. That was not the plan. Cool.<br /> <br /> B: Have you guys seen ... they had pictures of people holding up these goofy questions. I think they were people that were actually at the event, and they wrote questions, trying to explain, &quot;Hey, Bill! What do you say about &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; type of thing.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio 22 Questions for Bill Nye]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: If we're descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ...<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> B: Right, that's a perfect example!<br /> <br /> BN: What purpose to monkeys serve, exactly?<br /> <br /> B: So, there was a lot of those pictures, and a lot of websites have been created showing what those people said, and then having somebody else hold another card responding to it, and they were just beautiful lessons on how to deal with ... I know, but it came out of it, and it's just one of the things that I just loved reading and making them look so ridiculous.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.businessinsider.com/22-responses-to-buzzfeeds-22-messages-from-creationists-2014-2 22 Answers for creationists]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: To us. But to his followers ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Oh yeah. But, so what? Like you said, you didn't convert anyone.<br /> <br /> S: They were all gotcha questions. They were gotcha questions that reveal they don't know anything about the science of evolution.<br /> <br /> BN: It's troubling, because we're the most technologically advanced society – you could say Japan – Finland is very, actually, New Zealand is very good. But this is where the iPhone's designed, right? And yet, we have these people in our midst that have no understanding of where an iPhone comes from, for example.<br /> <br /> J: Or don't even care to question it.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah. So that's why we got ... and the big thing, you guys, for me, the critical issues are climate change and the future of science education, and engineers. So, Ken Ham denies climate change. I mean, that's one of his things. He's doing all he can to indoctrinate young people in that area, Kentucky, mostly.<br /> <br /> E: He may see an income stream from going that approach too. A new revenue stream ...<br /> <br /> BN: He does.<br /> <br /> E: ... yeah, by appealing to the people who deny that climate change is happening.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I'm sure that they're the same people. I mean, if you were scientifically aware, you wouldn't ... I don't think you'd give Answers in Genesis any money, would you?<br /> <br /> J: (Laughs) Probably not.<br /> <br /> B: But speaking of climate change, I saw you on {{w|Last Week Tonight with John Oliver|John Oliver's show}}.<br /> <br /> BN: That was big fun.<br /> <br /> B: And that was fantastic! I just loved it because none of the people actually stress that point, that you can't have the scientific position here, and then a denier here, when there's ... the {{w|false balance}} is ridiculous. And he just brought, like, what, 97 scientists on.<br /> <br /> BN: 96. So I was 97.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, but they were all speaking in this caucophany.<br /> <br /> BN: I just noticed, you guys, what a great thing it was. It's {{w|Mother's Day}}, alright? And these are actors. &quot;Sure! I'll be an extra on Mother's Day. Sure, okay.&quot; (Rogues laugh) Just shows ya, it's a tough business. But everybody was really cool, really gracious, and people were excited to participate. John Oliver's really come into his own.<br /> <br /> B: Really!<br /> <br /> E: Oh boy.<br /> <br /> B: He's been nailing it on his show.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, humor's a great vehicle for exposing nonsense.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, this business of irony. There are books written about the nature of laughter, and what you find ironic. And you'll be shocked to learn that what Michael Shermer calls &quot;socially liberal&quot; - is that what he says? Or is it liberal social? Socially liberal people have a much more highly developed sense of irony. And this is from brain scans. I didn't ... not my thing!<br /> <br /> E: It's not my thing, it's a fact!<br /> <br /> BN: I've been reading this book, &quot;[http://www.amazon.com/Ha-The-Science-When-Laugh/dp/product-description/0465031706 Ha]!&quot; about the nature of laughter, and it's really fascinating.<br /> <br /> J: So, Bill, tell us about the things that you're doing with the government to help affect change.<br /> <br /> BN: The government? Well, just when the White House calls, I show up.<br /> <br /> S: You've got the red phone? The hotline?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, sort of. You may not know, but there's something called the {{w|Office of Science and Technology Policy}}. Somewhat disclosure – a guy who works there was a grad student under the guy who started the Space Policy Institute. So, he'll call me, or text me. Or he'll have somebody call me or text me. And if the President asked you to come to the {{w|White House}} science fair, you show up, sorry man.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;{{w|Maker Faire}}&quot;, a few weeks ago, and that was cool. These people make kooky stuff in order, or learning the technology, developing the technology that allows us to make things that were not possible to make. You know, I'm a mechanical engineer, and now we're all into {{w|3D printing|additive manufacturing}}, have you heard this expression?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: There didn't use to be any such thing. There was {{w|lost-wax casting}}.<br /> <br /> E: Right<br /> <br /> BN: Or was, still is ... and moulding, and stuff. And that's in a sense, additive manufacturing, but not like printing rocket engine nozzles.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, right?<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> J: I know, tell me about it.<br /> <br /> E: Exciting.<br /> <br /> J: I can't believe that.<br /> <br /> BN: It's cool. It's exciting. <br /> <br /> S: How involved are you, at all, as a planetary society, with the Dragon, or other ...<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, so {{w|Elon Musk}} was on our board for many years, or a few years, but he had to recuse himself when he got the government contract for commercial crewed space flight. {{w|SpaceX}} has gotten, this is my memory, but it's right around $500 million, right around half a billion dollars from NASA. And so has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_Corporation Sierra Nevada Space], and another one.<br /> <br /> J: The {{w|Orion (spacecraft)|Orion}}?<br /> <br /> BN: The Orion! Yeah, {{w|Boeing}} has also gotten money. So, the Orion, everybody, is a compromise. But that's the nature of politics.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think? What's the bottom line? What's your feeling about the Orion? Is that gonna be a useful addition, or is it gonna be a wasteful boondoggle, or somewhere in between?<br /> <br /> BN: I'm on camera, right? We are hopeful that it's very successful.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> S: (Quiet) Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: No, you guys, you can go to {{w|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station|Cape Canaveral}}, and there is the constellation gantry tower. You know what I mean by this? This thing that holds up a rocket, that was never built because it was underfunded from the get-go, and people presumed, as has happened so often in that past, that once you've got a program started, people will just keep it going no matter what. Space man, this is America. This is what we're gonna do.<br /> <br /> But after a while, somebody said, &quot;Wait, you're way off in your budget. You're just too far off.&quot; And Orion's what's left over from that.<br /> <br /> J: And it's actually derivative of a few different attempts, right?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, everybody, it's fairly popular when you run for President, if you guys go that route, to say we're gonna go to the {{w|Moon}}. It's really popular to say we're gonna go to {{w|Mars}}. But the scale of it, as this guy we work with – we have a lobbyist at the Planetary Society. He says these people in {{w|United States Congress|Congress}} think it's {{w|Pepsi}} or {{w|Coca-Cola|Coke}}, the Moon or Mars.<br /> <br /> No, one's three days, the other is three years. Keeping people alive for three years in deep space with radiation, with no gravity, it's just not so trivial. Not so easy.<br /> <br /> E: All kinds of problems.<br /> <br /> J: Keeping them from going crazy in a spaceship for three years is a challenge.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I didn't write this joke; it was told to me by Congressman {{w|Adam Schiff}}, who, his district used to include JPL,{{w|Jet Propulsion Laboratory| Jet Propulsion Lab}}. Now it doesn't, it's {{w|Judy Chu}}, but now, it still includes {{w|California Institute of Technology|Caltech}}, so he's in that {{w|Pasadena, California|Pasedena}} space community.<br /> <br /> Alright, so they send this mission to Mars that's auto-return. What's it called, Mars Frontier? Anyway, it's a husband and wife that are of an age where they can no longer have children. So they fly out – and this will be possible in the year 2018. There's an automatic return if you get the trajectory just so, the orbit of Mars will sling you right back to Earth. So, you won't land, you'll just woo-o-o, come back. Take pictures, and I guess we (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> So, in the context of this joke, gentlemen, the spacecraft and everything's going well, but on the way back, suddenly there's no communication. There's no words from the thing. It automatically gets in orbit around the Earth, no communication. They go up with another spacecraft, and look in the window, and both the husband and wife have been dismembered, been torn limb from limb. How is this possible? And then, Adam Schiff says, &quot;Well, you've never been married.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, to your point, this is a very serious concern. 400 days with the same people in a room as big as this table. There's some trouble.<br /> <br /> E: People are still people.<br /> <br /> B: To me, the biggest problem is the radiation that you would encounter. No one has any .. is anyone addressing that?<br /> <br /> BN: Yep, well people<br /> <br /> B: Is it a deal breaker?<br /> <br /> BN: ... argue the radiation is not that strong.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> BN: But I'm not sure that's true. And so, by the way, changing it back to ... and the Planetary Society, we hope, again, to launch, to fly, this thing called the {{w|Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment}}. Did you hear about that? LIFE? So, it's a titanium puck with several microbes that are very well characterized and purified, and properly freeze-dried, and some water bears, the {{w|Tardigrade|tardigrades}}.<br /> <br /> B: Tardigrades, they're awesome! They're incredible.<br /> <br /> E: Good imitation!<br /> <br /> J: You're gonna see if they're gonna die?<br /> <br /> BN: I can't see under the table? And then we'd send them, we were gonna send them to Phobos and back, the moon of Mars. But, it crashed. It was a Russian rocket. {{w|Fobos Grunt}}, it was called. Grunt is Russian, my understanding, is Russian for soil. Anyway, it was gonna scoop up some {{w|Phobos (moon)|Phobos}}, but it crashed in the {{w|Pacific Ocean}}.<br /> <br /> So, we might get a chance to fly that again. And, to your point, we'll see if they can take this radiation. Then, presumably, they'd come back, and we'd light 'em up again, put warm water on them and see what happens. So, like one of the questions ... do you know radiodurans?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Deinococcus radiodurans|Radiodurans}}! {{w|Extremophile}}! <br /> <br /> BN: Who doesn't love those?<br /> <br /> B: Right? It's my favourite {{w|microorganism}}.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, way to go.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, why does that bacterium have the capability to withstand radiation? This is a cool, evolutionary ...<br /> <br /> J: Does it absorb it?<br /> <br /> B: No, it blows apart the {{w|DNA}}, and it can reform. It's amazing stuff. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It reconstitutes its own DNA.<br /> <br /> S: It's also partly that it's simplified its DNA as much as possible, so there are fewer opportunities for it being destroyed.<br /> <br /> BN: No, but here's the thing. Here's what we love to be charmed by in {{w|astrobiology}}, not quite science fiction, thinking out louding, is maybe Mars was hit by an impactor 3 billion years ago. A living thing got into space on a meteorite before it became a meteorite, and just in 17,000 quick years, in a home in orbit, it made its way to the Earth, and we are all ...<br /> <br /> E: So we are all Martians.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Panspermia}}, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's just a cool thing to wonder about, and it's a wonderful thing to investigate. We have the capability, this generation of people, to send the right spacecraft there and look into that question more carefully. I mean, if we were to discover evidence of life on Mars, it would change the world!<br /> <br /> J: Say it.<br /> <br /> E: (Accent) Change the world!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:03:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Item #1]: A recently published analysis indicates that, if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20-40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> [http://blogs.chapman.edu/press-room/2014/07/23/the-quantum-cheshire-cat-can-a-particle-be-separated-from-its-properties/ Item #2]: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself, so the particle was in one location while its magnetic moment was in another.<br /> [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uoia-pun072814.php Item #3]: Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity, in an indium alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real, and one fake. Then I ask my expert skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Are you guys ready for this week?<br /> <br /> R: We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah. As ready as last week.<br /> <br /> S: Nah, there's no real theme this week.<br /> <br /> R: Ah, okay.<br /> <br /> S: No theme. Okay, here we go: Item #1: A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 – 40% of the world will have serious {{w|Water scarcity|water shortage}} by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> <br /> Item #2: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So the particle was in one location while its {{w|magnetic moment}} was in another. And Item #3: Researchers have successfully created {{w|Cooper pair|Cooper pairs}}, the hallmark of {{w|superconductivity}} in an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium indium] alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> R: What?!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: You heard him.<br /> <br /> R: Why couldn't there have been a theme, and the theme was {{w|Cheetah|cheetahs}}, or {{w|Sloth|sloths}}?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, cuddly animals or ...<br /> <br /> R: Instead, the theme is shit Rebecca doesn't know! Again! I'm getting sick of this, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Things that go meow.<br /> <br /> B: I don't mind!<br /> <br /> R: Ugh! Bob, go first.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Bob is going last. Evan, you go first.<br /> <br /> R: Ugh!<br /> <br /> E: Okay. Steve, I'm gonna start with the first one, in which you wrote, &quot;A recently published analysis indicates that blah, blah, blah,&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> S: Yada yada<br /> <br /> E: If we continue our current mix of electricity generation, okay, I buy that. 20 – 40% of the world will have serious water shortage! Okay, why is that? By 2020? And there'll be a global water shortage by 2040? I don't know. This smacks of other things we've kind of heard about in the past, in which these sorts of predictions are made, and they don't always turn out to, I think, be as serious as this. That's not to say it's not a serious issue, but these things tend to get I think, overestimated, and maybe a little over hyped. I don't know if that's one of these.<br /> <br /> Well, moving on to the second one, &quot;Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle.&quot; That's mind boggling, frankly. I don't think there's any other way to put it. Particle was in one location. It's magnetic moment (laughs) was in another. Oh, I've never heard that term, &quot;Magnetic moment,&quot; before.<br /> <br /> J: I know! I thought that was odd.<br /> <br /> B: Where you been?<br /> <br /> E: What? Magnetic moment?<br /> <br /> R: I'm really glad he said that, because I assumed I was the only person who didn't know.<br /> <br /> E: Bob, tell me one time that those words have ever been spoken like that on this show. I can't remember a single time. We've never talked about the magnetic moment of particles, never!<br /> <br /> B: You know, I bet I've mentioned it a couple times in the last 470 episodes.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I bet he has.<br /> <br /> E: Some listener will correct me on that if it's out there, but I frankly, I don't remember.<br /> <br /> B: Frankly, I forget what we talk about last week, dude. Come on.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this is too wild, I think, to not be true. Why the hell, Steve, would you throw this in here? This is, you're really trying to trip us up here. And how they've done it, who the hell knows? High speed collisions, you know? Whatever.<br /> <br /> The last one, researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs. An indium alloy at near room temperature. &lt;I&gt;In&lt;/I&gt; an indium alloy at near room temperature. Okay. Indium, huh? So, basically, have we actually hit the gold standard here.<br /> <br /> S: The holy grail.<br /> <br /> E: Well, I mean, is this some sort of ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Cold fusion}}?<br /> <br /> E: ... what were we talking about. Cold fusion! Thank you. Kind of thing. It's kind of what we're talking about 'cause of the whole room temperature thing. That seems to be very, very ... I'll go with my gut and say that I think the water shortage one is the fiction. I think there's some merit to it, there's something going on. I think that those estimates are too soon though. We may have a serious problem maybe a hundred years from now, but not 5, 8, one generation from now. I think that's an exaggeration. So, that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Jay.<br /> <br /> J: Okay, this first one, very smart, Steve. This first one about the water, the water shortage. I've read quite a bit about that. I've heard about it. I think I've seen a TV show about the water shortage claims that are coming, and a lot of this hype about, are we shipping all of our water to China, and everything? I don't know.<br /> <br /> I do think though, that there may be some truth in this, but I'm not quite sure that this news item itself is completely true. It seems plausible that we could have water shortages. I just don't know, Steve, the connection here with electricity. I'm a little confused about.<br /> <br /> Okay, the second one about the particle being separated from its magnetic moment. I kind of agree with Evan. It's an oddball item, and it seems to be either that they tried to do it, and they couldn't do it. I just don't see a good fake here.<br /> <br /> This last one, however, I would think that if this happened, the way that Steve is saying it, that there'd be nothing preventing my browser from exploding in my face with news items coming up about room temperature superconductivity. So I'm gonna say that the third one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's where I was leaning. The only one of these that I can even really parse is the one about electricity generation and water shortage. And yeah, I do know that there is a connection between those two. I think that it's because nuclear power plants and coal plants too, maybe, require a lot of water for cooling. That one makes sense to me, and, yeah, global water shortage by 2040, that can mean a lot of things. It's kind of vague, what kind of shortage are we talking about? We obviously already have problems with droughts and stuff in parts of the United States, but also, we fly drinking water from Fiji into our Starbucks. So ...<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah! {{w|Fiji}} water? Do you not know about Fiji water? Fiji water literally takes the only potable water in Fiji, and leaves the residents to drink sewage water. Fun times. So (Laughs) yeah. Global water shortage, okay, probably something that majorly affects the developing nations more, but yeah.<br /> <br /> So, I'm going between the other two. I don't know what a magnetic moment is. I assumed it's something like it's position, in space or something. I don't know. Why not? But yeah, the room temperature thing. I was wondering if it was something like cold fusion-esque, and Evan and Jay seem to think so. And so, I think, yeah. If that's what this has to do with, then, yeah, I find that the least believable. So I'm going to go with the Cooper pairs at room temperature being the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: A-a-and, Bob.<br /> <br /> B: Alright, the water shortage, these numbers seem a little dramatic to me. I always heard it's coming. 20 – 40%! You know, 6 years, potentially? Seri ... and 2040 ... what is a global water shortage? How extensive? How global would that be? But I don't have huge problems with that.<br /> <br /> The second one, yeah, {{w|quantum mechanics}} is crazy! Absolutely, I totally buy this. I mean, you talking about things like {{w|Quantum entanglement|entanglement}} and {{w|Quantum superposition|superposition}}, yeah, I could totally see this. It's a little surprising to me, but you gotta just learn to roll with quantum mechanics, unless of course, the claims are pseudoscientific. But, so yeah, that one doesn't surprise me. I really, really hope that's true, 'cause that's fantastic.<br /> <br /> Yeah, I got a problem with the third one. Cooper pairs, come on. Room temperature? No. We're not there yet. And I have to agree with Jay that this would be all over. This would be huge. That's the holy grail, right there! Room temperature. <br /> <br /> S: (Scottish accent) The Grail!<br /> <br /> B: (inaudiable) I remember first hearing about high temperature superconductivity back, what Steve, '90's? Early '90's? No, late '80's maybe.<br /> <br /> S: Something like that.<br /> <br /> B: And I'm thinking, &quot;Oh boy!&quot; You know, and now, twenty-something, thirty years later, it's still mysterious. So, yeah, I'm just not buying that we've got that yet. I mean, I really hope I'm wrong on this one, but I severely doubt it, so that's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, well, you all agree with #2, so let's start there. Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So, the particle was in one place, while it's magnetic moment was in another. You guys all think this one is science ...<br /> <br /> R: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: and this one is ... So you guys don't know what a magnetic moment is?<br /> <br /> R: Well, Bob ... I <br /> <br /> J: I know what it is!<br /> <br /> E: It's when you look across the room, and you stare at that special person in the eyes, and you have a connection that you can't quite explain.<br /> <br /> R: (Singing) This magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so the magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantitiy that determines the torque-able experienced in an external {{w|magnetic field}}.<br /> <br /> B: You are correct, sir!<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, it's basically a property of the magnetic, it's own magnetism, think about it that way. A bar {{w|magnet}}, an {{w|electron}}, a {{w|molecule}}, and a {{w|planet}} all have magnetic moments. And apparently, so do {{w|neutrons}}. This one is science. And Bob's right. That wacky quantum mechanics can do anything, apparently.<br /> <br /> B: Almost.<br /> <br /> S: Very ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Deus ex machina}} of Science or Fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: So, what the scientists did was they used a neutron {{w|Interferometry|interferometer}}. Ever hear of that, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you take a beam of neutrons, you split them into two paths, or the neutrons could basically take one of two ...<br /> <br /> J: The two paths, I know.<br /> <br /> B: What?<br /> <br /> J: You actually described it pretty well, Steve. Now, taking that to the next step though, when you decouple these {{w|Electric power conversion|power converters}} ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: and you cross phase them through the actual early, early {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} converter type systems.<br /> <br /> B: (Snickering) Java ...<br /> <br /> J: What you get is a semi crossed {{w|Parallax|paralaxed}} {{w|Paralysis|paralyzation}} of the {{w|Coma|comatose}} {{w|Crematory|cremators}}.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Did you get the power converters at {{w|Hitachi station}}?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Technobabble}}!<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now, what really happened was, you could send this beam of neutrons simultaneously down two paths! This is standard quantium mechanics, right?<br /> <br /> J: Are you saying there's two paths you can go down, but in the long run, it's not too late to change the road you're on?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct, because the neutrons can decide later if they went down Path A, or Path B, right? They go down both simultaneously until they interact with something, then they have to choose the path. That's standard quantum mechanics. But what they were able to do in this experiment was by aligning the magnetic moments of the two streams, and then selecting for one stream, they could select for neutrons that had to go through one path. Does that make sense? They basically filtered out one of the two paths.<br /> <br /> So now they have, even though those streams came together again, they could select out the neutrons that chose Path A, and filter out all the neutrons that chose Path B. But at the same time, they could also align the magnetic moment of the neutrons, and they did it differently for the two paths. And what they were able to show was that the neutrons at the other end went down Path A, but their magnetic moment essentially went down Path B. Does that make sense?<br /> <br /> E: Uh ...<br /> <br /> B: That's sweet as hell, man.<br /> <br /> E: Sure!<br /> <br /> B: I love quantum mechanics.<br /> <br /> S: So, they separated the particle from its own magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's ...<br /> <br /> B: I love it!<br /> <br /> S: Crazy quantum mechanics. Alright, so that one is science. So, I guess we'll go on to #3. Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity in an indium alloy at near room temperature. Bob, Jay, and Rebecca think this one is fiction. Evan thinks this one is science. And this one is ... so you guys are all assuming that creating Cooper pairs ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god.<br /> <br /> S: ... is equal to superconductivity.<br /> <br /> R: Look, I don't know, Steve.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I am!<br /> <br /> S: What if they were able to create Cooper pairs even though the material itself wasn't superconducting? Bob, you know what Cooper pairs are.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, the electrons get bound together, and they can just slide through, and not be disturbed by any part of the material. It's one of the hallmarks of a special class of superconductivity, but, yeah, technically, you're right. And if it's true, I'm gonna kill you.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Well ...<br /> <br /> E: On his birthday?<br /> <br /> S: It is technically correct, but this one is the fiction!<br /> <br /> R: Hurray!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: So ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! I got one right!<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Cooper pairs are basically superconductivity. But, this is based on a real item. I always get a chuckle when you guys say, &quot;How could Steve think of this?&quot; Well, I'm not making stuff up. I'm always basing it off of some item. I'm just tweaking.<br /> <br /> B: He's not that creative!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I don't have to be that creative, yeah. What this ... the item basically is just physicists understanding a little bit better, the nature of superconductivity. And the hope is that one day, one magical day, they'll use this knowledge in order to be able to finally get the &quot;holy grail,&quot; and make room temperature superconductors. But, yeah, they have not created anything. They just were able to, make some further investigation to sort of further understanding, essentially the quantum glue that holds these Cooper pairs together. That was the breakthrough.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. But they did use indium; So, I pulled that out of there. Indium, by the way, indium is an element. It is atomic #49. It is a metal. It's a soft metal with a fairly low melting point. It's chemically similar to {{w|gallium}} and {{w|thallium}}. Indium. Pretty cool.<br /> <br /> E: It sounds like two dwarves from {{w|The Lord of the Rings|Lord of the Rings}}.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> B: Gallium! Thallium!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Right, okay, let's go on to #1. A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 to 40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040 is ... science. Doesn't mean this is going to come ...<br /> <br /> R: Hooray for water scarcity!<br /> <br /> S: So, the connection, as Rebecca said, is we need to use a lot of water to cool these power generators. Whether it's nuclear, or it's coal, or whatever. You can't let them overheat. A lot of power plants don't really track how much water they're using. So the authors are saying this is a problem. We need to more carefully track this.<br /> <br /> R: Really? Jeez.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, and what they mean by a water shortage is that you will essentially have to choose between power generation and drinking water, that we won't have enough to do both.<br /> <br /> E: Hrmm...<br /> <br /> S: By 2040 – which doesn't sound that far in the future when you think about it -<br /> <br /> E: A generation.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that the entire world will be experiencing this water shortage if we are meeting our electricity needs at that time with our current mix of power generation. So, what's the solution? Well, they make a number of recommendations. Improve energy efficiency; better research on alternative cooling cycles; researching on how much water power plants use; massive investments in wind and solar, because wind and solar don't use a lot of water; and abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water stressed places, which is, they say, half the planet, because that's what uses the most water to make electricity.<br /> <br /> So, yeah, pretty frightening extrapolation, but of course, it's one study, this is &lt;I&gt;their&lt;/I&gt; analysis. These are always difficult. There's a lot of moving parts, you know.<br /> <br /> E: That's why I thought it wasn't science, you know.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you know. I just said, it's a published analysis that indicates this. I thought you could believe it or not believe it. But any single analysis like this, like, &quot;We're reaching {{w|peak oil}}!&quot; Any of those, you always got to take them with a grain of salt because, you know, you leave out one factor, and it can change the whole outcome, you know? So, it's very tricky. And I'd like to see that there's a consensus, that multiple independant analyses are overlapping, coming to the same conclusion. So ... but it definitely is one more reason that even if their projections are overly grim, it's one more reason to get off fossil fuels, and to make, as Bob suggests, a massive investment in at least solar energy. So, there you have it. Good job, guys!<br /> <br /> J: Thank you!<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, except Evan.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you!<br /> <br /> == Announcements: &lt;small&gt;(1:20:33)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Jay, before we get to the quote, I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, I want to give a very sincere thank you to everyone who has donated to our legal defense fund. We are already, we've covered about 60% of the legal expenses that we have made so far. So, we have covered a huge chunk of our legal expenses with the donations.<br /> <br /> Obviously, we can't know ahead of time what the ultimate costs are gonna be. I have estimates from my lawyer, and it's a lot. You know, it's probably gonna be somewhere between 60 and 70,000 dollars if the thing goes the distance. So, we do have a ways to go before we got there. But, in just one week, there has been an incredible outpouring of support for the SGU, for our defense against this lawsuit, and of course, people donating to support our defense, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it.<br /> <br /> We also wanted to point out that the SGU, always looking to expand our activity, has a new webpage on our SGU homepage, the Science News page. So, if you go to [http://www.theskepticsguide.org theskepticsguide.org], and you click on the science news banner, you will see that we're putting up about two to three news items per day. We're going to be expanding it, but we're selecting items that are like, the coolest news items of the day. And Evan is doing some reviews of ... Evan has got, you've got two that you're doing. Why don't you describe them really quick for us, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, thanks, Steve. So, I am doing two reviews, like, you said. One is ... I call it the SGU Cutting Room Floor. So, these are some items that we would have loved to have gotten to on the last episode of the show, but just didn't have the time. There's always more items than we have time for. And then the other one is called the Top 5 Ridiculous Comments of the Week. So, I scour the internet, looking for people making all sorts of ridiculous comments on all sorts of different things, and I try to condense that down to the top 5 each week. So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yep, and we're adding some special segments. We have a Weird, Wildlife Wednesday segment that we're putting out. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/author/kate Kate Christian] is doing that for us. Kate's really been helpful with all of our social media efforts. So, I'd like to thank her as well for helping us get this going. And send us, if you have any ideas for science news bits you'd like to see on the Science News page, let us know. We're always looking to expand the content that we're putting there.<br /> <br /> And, of course, all of this is interfacing with our Facebook page, which we have been extremely active on as well. So, if you haven't checked out our Facebook page recently, check it out. Check out our Science News page. Send us ideas for stuff you'd like to see there.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:23:14)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;“I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.”-Lawrence M. Krauss&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, give us the quote.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;I hope that every person at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.” (Shouting) {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}}!<br /> <br /> S: I like that! I like that. It's a very good quote. It is a good, sobering, humbling experience to have something you firmly believe be proven completely and utterly wrong.<br /> <br /> J: That was sent in by a listener named, Brendan Shwass, from New Zealand. Brendan, we're fully expecting to meet you in person when we will be in New Zealand, I think, what is that, the first week of December?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me this week, everyone.<br /> <br /> B: Sure, Steve.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> R: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you guys.<br /> <br /> R: What a better way to spend your birthday.<br /> <br /> J: I love you.<br /> <br /> E: Hey, happy birthda-a-ay!<br /> <br /> J: You're one of the best people I know, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you brotha. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> Before Greenwich got Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude, used by sailors.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Prime meridian (Greenwich)|Zero Longitude}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> All batteries need to have three things in order to work: An electrolite, an anode, and a cathode.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Battery (electricity)|Battery components}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The KT extinction boundary has been renamed the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary.<br /> <br /> Humanity is headed for a global water shortage&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Looming water shortage]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y<br /> |General Science = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> |SGU = y<br /> |Technology = y}}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_473&diff=9573 2015-01-18T00:10:54Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Science or Fiction (1:03:06) */ various minor corrections.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 473<br /> |episodeDate = August 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Fluffydinosaur1.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |rebecca = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = BN: {{w|Bill Nye}}<br /> |guest2 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no second guest --&gt;<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-02.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44275.0.html<br /> |qowText = I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey everybody<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys.<br /> <br /> S: And Evan Bernstein<br /> <br /> E: Steve, did you say it's July 29th?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct!<br /> <br /> E: As in July 29th, 1964?<br /> <br /> S: 1964?<br /> <br /> E: 50 years ago, to the day, er...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, well, this day in Skepticism, Steve Novella was born!<br /> <br /> (Rogues cheer)<br /> <br /> J: That's actually relevant too! That's really cool! Happy birthday, brother!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you so much.<br /> <br /> E: Happy birthday.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. I'm 50.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel?<br /> <br /> S: The big 5 – 0<br /> <br /> J: Holy crap.<br /> <br /> S: The Y-5-0<br /> <br /> B: Oh mother ....<br /> <br /> S: Four bits.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel? Do you feel different?<br /> <br /> S: Half a century.<br /> <br /> R: Have you bought a sports car?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, no, I'm way past my midlife crisis already.<br /> <br /> R: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: I decided to start a podcast for my midlife crisis.<br /> <br /> R: That's sad.<br /> <br /> E: Look what it's gotten you.<br /> B: You freak.<br /> <br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:11)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 2, 1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by Parliament.<br /> <br /> R: Well, you know what, you share a birthday with {{w|Greenwich Mean Time}}! Did you know that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Is that right?<br /> <br /> R: Yah!<br /> <br /> E: Awesome!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (British accent) Greenwich Mean Time, I say.<br /> <br /> R: Well, oh, wait. No, you don't, because this was August 2nd, the day this podcast comes out.<br /> <br /> B: Psyche!<br /> <br /> R: Sorry ...<br /> <br /> S: Close.<br /> <br /> E: In podcast land, you share, but not in real life.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Well, there goes my big segue. Anyway, in 1880, on August 2nd, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by the {{w|Parliament of the United Kingdom|UK Parliament}}. Which is, it's always weird to me when I think about time suddenly coming into existence. (Laughs) I mean, obviously, time has always existed, because it always requires time.<br /> <br /> E: Oh!<br /> <br /> R: (Laughs) But for a long time, each town would have it's own, particular time; and there was really no desperate need to make sure that they were all coordinated but once ...<br /> <br /> B: Train schedules!<br /> <br /> R: Train schedules were one thing, but the reason why Greenwich Mean Time was adopted when it was, was apparently more for naval navigation, and it was only standardized and used across Europe once train transportation increased. And then it wasn't until three years after it was officially adopted that the United States adopted it as well. And that was when telegraph lines first started transmitting (inaudible) &lt;!type?&gt; signals to all the cities.<br /> <br /> B: Ah-h-h...<br /> <br /> R: So, yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Cool.<br /> <br /> R: And it was adopted worldwide, November 1st, 1884.<br /> <br /> J: Cool! Very cool!<br /> <br /> R: And then there was time.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, before Greenwich was Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude. So, when sailors – as you said – sailors would set their clocks to Greenwich Time, because then they would estimate their longitude by how far they were from Greenwich, basically. Based upon, &quot;Oh, it's noon! And the sun is two hours past being directly overhead. So I must be two hours past zero longitude.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> J: (British accent) There you have it.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Mike Adams Follow Up &lt;small&gt;(3:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/07/28/fbi-turns-up-heat-on-mike-adams-as-health-ranger-fiasco-widens-plus-adams-archive/<br /> <br /> S: So, Jay, you're gonna give us a quick follow up on the whole {{w|NaturalNews|Mike Adams}} hubbub from last week.<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Ugh.<br /> <br /> S: Things are happening so fast we actually missed some important updates when we recorded the last show.<br /> <br /> J: Well, yeah, the quick summary is that Mike wrote a blog post where he compares people that support or are neutral about {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMOs}} to the {{w|Nazi Germany|Nazi regime}} and, in essence, put out a death threat against anybody that supports GMOs, saying that good people – who are anti-GMO – should kill people who are pro-GMO. And he riddled his blog post with pictures of {{w|Adolf Hitler|Hitler}}, and the Nazi party, and all the terrible things that they did, using that as ...<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Swastika#As_the_symbol_of_Nazism|Swastikas}}.<br /> <br /> J: yeah, swastikas, everything, using it as a way to convince his readers that they need to take action. Now, the big thing that he did, also, was that he requested that someone make a website that lists the offending parties, people that support GMO. And Steve, and {{w|David Gorski}}, and a ton of other journalists and news outlets were listed on this website. And then things got stranger.<br /> <br /> If that blog post wasn't strange and horrible enough, the update is that now the {{w|Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI}} is really turning up the heat on Mike, and they're investigating him. And some legitimate proof has come down the pike through web forensics that Mike is actually the person who created the listing website. Let me give you the details behind that.<br /> <br /> Now keep in mind, he supposedly requested during his blog, in the middle of his blog, for someone to create this website. Wouldn't it be convenient if somebody created this list of people that we can mark as our enemies, the big supporters of GMO, the big offenders. The &quot;people that should be killed,&quot; right? Then this website pops up very soon after, and Mike updates his blog saying, &quot;and here's a link to the website that some reader of my blog created.&quot;<br /> <br /> Turns out, Mike is that reader. It turns out that that website was created a short while before Mike actually posted his blog post calling for these people to be killed.<br /> <br /> B: Oh-h-h, nice.<br /> <br /> J: It also turns out that the formatting of the website – those two pages, specifically – Mike's page, and the listing page of the supporters of GMO have very similar formats and layout. And not just they're both using Wordpress, but similar in ways that someone looking at the code, and the &quot;forensics&quot; can determine that it's probably the same exact code base. I don't know how else to put this ... (shouting) Busted! Like, yeah, Mike, you got caught with your pants way down!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Jay, even more important, what did he say about that website before it was even proven that he was the author?<br /> <br /> J: What did he say? Well, what he did was ...<br /> <br /> B: How did he ...<br /> <br /> J: He did a series of updates on his blog. So, he's littering his blog with these updates. &quot;Update: I didn't actually, these are not my words. I didn't say to kill these people. I'm just quoting some nazi bad guy from 50 years ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: No, no, no, he was quoting the current {{w|President of Germany}}, who was talking about the {{w|Wolf's Lair|Wolf's Den}} assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler.<br /> <br /> R: Well, he said he was paraphrasing.<br /> <br /> S: ''Paraphrasing''. But then I also heard that the German president didn't actually say that.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he said, &quot;I was paraphrasing the German government.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's all irrelevant. He constructed a narrative. {{w|Monsanto}} is evil. They're like the nazis. People who are pro-GMO are paid Monsanto collaborators. They are like nazi collaborators. It was morally acceptable – in fact, an imperitive – to kill nazi collaborators. He laid it all out there. Then he makes the Monsantocollaborators website, claims somebody else did it. And then when the heat gets turned up, he has the audacity to claim, &quot;You know what? I'm beginning to think that this Monsantocollaborators website is a {{w|False flag|false flag}} operation. That Monsanto created it just to make me look like an idiot.&quot;<br /> <br /> And then it turns out, as Jay was pointing out, that &lt;I&gt;he&lt;/I&gt; made the website! So he's pretty much busted in a flat out lie. And there's no other way to really interpret it in my mind.<br /> <br /> J: He didn't have ...<br /> <br /> E: What'd he think?<br /> <br /> J: Well, Evan, what he thought was ...<br /> <br /> E: How could he not think he was not gonna get caught?<br /> <br /> J: In his stupor of hatred, he really thought that he was gonna incite people to take some type of action. Now, I can't say – I can only speculate – and this is, of course, all in my opinion. I honestly don't know if Mike actually wanted people like my brother, Steve, and for David Gorski to get killed. I don't know. But he really made it seem crystal clear that that was the message. That truly was the message.<br /> <br /> E: And, where's the mainstream media on all of this? You know, I'm seeing a lot of writings from people in skeptical circles, science circles, and so forth, but I've not seen it on {{w|ABC News|ABC}}. I have not seen it on {{w|CNN}}. I've not seen it in any of those places.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it would be interesting if it did get wider mainstream coverage, but, we'll see.<br /> <br /> E: He gets plenty of coverage in other ways, all in positive ways.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's true.<br /> <br /> E: On {{w|The Oprah Winfrey Show|Oprah}}, and {{w|The Dr. Oz Show|Dr. Oz}}, and all these ...<br /> <br /> S: The best thing is though, that the FBI is investigating. He crossed a line, where now the FBI is looking into this. So, if they could get access to information to not just strongly suggest, but to actually prove that Mike Adams was behind the Monsantocollaborators website, then he is &lt;I&gt;legally&lt;/I&gt; busted; then he is totally busted. And, I don't know! I don't know how much the law allows for the FBI ... what actions to take against him.<br /> <br /> Either he was deliberately inciting to murder, or this was reckless endangerment. Then, at the very least, his reputation should be in tatters. And that's the one thing that we could most help with, is to make sure everybody remembers ... he should never live this down in my opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Never, ever! Well, we're never gonna let people forget it.<br /> <br /> R: Indeed.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, let's move on. Enough time on this guy.<br /> <br /> === Battery Advance &lt;small&gt;(9:44)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/scientists-approach-holy-grail-of-battery-technology-but-is-it-more-of-a-holey-grail<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about (sarcastic excitement) an exciting new advance in battery technology! Finally! Because we've never had this before!<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yes, another one! (Evan laughs) So ...<br /> <br /> R: It's always 5 to 10 years away, so, has it been 5 to 10 years?<br /> <br /> E: Since we last spoke about this one!<br /> <br /> B: So, scientists have apparently come very close to what some have called the holy grail of battery technology, and that's the phrase that got me. When I see holy grail ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh!<br /> <br /> B: in anything related to science, I perk up. I'm like, &quot;Alright, what the hell is going on here?&quot; Especially battery technology. We need a damn holy grail. So, {{w|Lithium-ion battery|lithium-ion batteries}}, they're one of the premier – I'm sure everyone's heard of them – they're one of the premier, most popular batteries for portable, and rechargeable consumer electronics. They've got many, many very good qualities, excellent energy density. They only slowly lose charge when they're not being used. There's no {{w|memory effect}}, which is kind of an often-abused term.<br /> <br /> Memory effect was used specifically to apply to {{w|Nickel-cadmium battery|nickel cadmium}}, and {{w|Nickel-metal hydride battery|nickel-metal hyride batteries}}. And it had to do with the fact that if you charge one of those batteries before it was fully discharged, then it would slowly decrease the amount of battery life that you would have.<br /> <br /> E: Oh-h! Yeah, you remember that? What a pain! Having to cycle your batteries, and stuff? What a pain.<br /> <br /> B: Right. So, lithium-ion does not suffer from that at all, although they do suffer, of course, from just general age-related issues that are just so annoying, so much so that it's one of the most common complaints about smart phones. So, battery life is still an issue, and not just for smartphones, obviously. There's so many things, cars especially.<br /> <br /> So, for a long time now, scientists have been trying to create a lithium-ion battery that has more lithium, actually in it. So, before I go on, I just got to cover real fast the basic battery components. All batteries need to have three of these things here, these three things.<br /> <br /> An {{w|electrolyte}}, which is basically just a source of electrons. An {{w|anode}}, which dispenses the electrons. And a {{w|cathode}}, which receives them. You need those three. You don't have those three, you pretty much don't have a battery.<br /> <br /> So, lithium-ion batteries have {{w|lithium}} in the electrolyte, which is good, but the anode is only partially lithium. It's not fully lithium. And an all-lithium anode would in fact be a huge improvement because it would allow for things like, it would be much lighter, it would be more energy-dense, and those are two of, I would say, the top three or four most desired qualities of these types of batteries.<br /> <br /> They've had problems though, with these fully lithiumized anodes – I don't think that's a word. Anodes made of lithium expand much more than any other material, and it causes cracks to form in the anode, releasing ions. And these ions create stringy {{w|Dendrite (metal)|dendrites}}, they call 'em, that shorten the battery life. There's chemical reactions between the electrolyte and the anode, and that depletes some of the electrolyte. It shortens the battery life. And, I'm sure you've all heard, of course, of the fire hazards that can happen because of this, because it gets so hot.<br /> <br /> So dealing with these exact issues is precisely what the researchers from {{w|Stanford University}} reporting in – what was it – the {{w|Nature Nanotechnology|Journal of Nature and Nanotechnology}}. Now, they're not quite there yet – how predictable is that – but they do seem to be extremely close. Close enough, I think, that I think it's not premature at all to publish about it, because it is an interesting advance.<br /> <br /> So what they did was create a coating for the anode that's made of these super-tiny carbon nanospheres. So, the nanospheres protect the anode, and prevent all these drawbacks that I've just mentioned. The ratio of lithium, the anode pushes out to the amount put in during a charge cycle is at 99%. So, you get that? That's called the [http://depts.washington.edu/matseed/batteries/MSE/definitions.html Coulombic efficiency]. But it needs to be 99.9% before it's really commercially viable.<br /> <br /> But this is really such a little difference that I think they should be able to make minor improvements, tweak it, and they'll be able to bring it up to snuff with hopefully not a huge amount of effort 'cause clearly, this fundamental concept is far superior to any of the previous attempts that have been made with a fully lithium anode, so that's really cool.<br /> <br /> Clearly, I think this is a really fantastic advance with much promise, but I do have a few problems. First of all, it's battery technology! We hear about advances, like Steve said, all the time! And then bam – nothing! I read article after article that sounds like a fantastic idea. &quot;Wow! This is really gonna change things!&quot; And then, that's like, literally, the last thing I hear about it. And that's generally because there's like, these key battery factors, and one of them or more will invariably fail. Whether it's the scalability, the cost, the recharging cycles; there's always something – a key thing – that is missing that prevents a lot of these things from just really taking off.<br /> <br /> Related to that is the fact that they're not quite at their goal yet, right? They're close, but often, going that last yard, or 9/10ths of a percent in this case, that's often the big problem, right? The last little bit is like, &quot;Damn, we can't quite get it.&quot; And who knows what kind of problems they could encounter that would prevent them from going even that little bit extra. I don't know enough about battery technology to really say what the stumbling blocks could be, although they are confident. But, big deal, everybody's confident.<br /> <br /> And then, finally, like I mentioned earlier, and most annoying to me, was that they described this as a holy grail of battery technology. But, I read a lot of news items on this, and a lot of these reports were saying that the technology could extend the battery life 2 to 3 times!<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's nice.<br /> <br /> B: That's really nice!<br /> <br /> S: It's incremental though.<br /> <br /> B: Holy grail? The holy grail is not incremental. That's a great way to say it. And they even said that affordable electric cars with a 300 mile range. Wait, whoa! $25,000 electric car, 300 mile range? Aren't we close to 300 miles now? If it could go 6, 7, 800, now you're talking!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think you're right, Bob. This is a potential incremental advance in lithium-ion battery technology – hardly worth the hype that they're giving it. And you're also right ... I mean, I literally see a news item about like this every week. I mean, &lt;I&gt;weekly&lt;/I&gt; there is some new press release about some new potential way of eeking more out of a lithium-ion battery. Some sound greater than this in potential.<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, that's right! Some of them, there's even more problems ...<br /> <br /> S: About a year or two ago, I read about using nano-structuring the lithium, and getting ten times the capacity out of it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: But then there's this little problem with how much can be discharged. So, the {{w|discharger}} is a little on the slow end to be actually useful for anything, but ... or, whatever. As you say, it's always something like that, because there's so many potential fatal deal killers with battery technology, that you have to have all your ducks in a row, or it's just a nice lab experiment.<br /> <br /> The other category, that it's like, literally every week, there's an amazing breakthrough, is the solar cell technology. Same thing.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes, yes, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: And they're just talking about some incremental advance in one aspect of the many possible things. And, you know, the thing about solar technology is that it &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; incrementally advancing. Each, every year, we're a little bit better. Okay, but the hype that comes with it now is just incredible.<br /> <br /> B: Right, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again: These types of technologies, batteries and solar {{w|photovoltaics}}, or just solar energy in general, these are the types of things that, god, if I had a trillion dollars laying around, this is the stuff that needs a {{w|Manhattan Project}}. Billions ... because these are the things that will impact and help the entire world just in one fell swoop!<br /> <br /> E: I don't know. Are they gonna come eventually? The whole time for 9+ years we've been talking about this is, it's always been small, incremental stage. Isn't it just the nature of this particular science that this is how it's gonna be, and ...<br /> <br /> S: It's the nature of many sciences. But Evan brings up a good point too, Bob. We may never have that one advance that gives us the 10 time improvement, the order of magnitude. It may be we just need the 2 to 3 times advance that's actually really good when you think about it. And you stack a few of those together, and then you're there. You know?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's fine. But, hey, we can speed up those incremental advances, can't we?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right?<br /> <br /> === Ray Comfort's Gravity Gaffe &lt;small&gt;(18:13)&lt;/small&gt; === <br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ray-comforts-gravity-gaffe<br /> <br /> <br /> S: But, Evan, do you think {{w|Ray Comfort}} can wrap his head around advances in battery and solar technology?<br /> <br /> B: Nice.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, are you kidding? He is Mr. Science. Move over, {{w|Bill Nye}}; get out of the way {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}}; Ray Comfort is here! Evangelical Minister, author, video producer, perhaps best known for the so-called [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Banana_fallacy banana falacy], in which he claimed that the perfection of the design of the banana is an example of God's hand in creation. Yes.<br /> <br /> B: Too bad &lt;I&gt;we&lt;/I&gt; designed the {{w|Cavendish banana subgroup|Cavendish banana}}.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Irrelevant! Not in the Bible.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: So, on July 26th, he threw this pearl of wisdom before his swine - (Bob laughs) - his Facebook readers. &quot;If the Bible isn't God-inspired, explain why ... how the writer of the {{w|Book of Job}} knew 3000 years ago that, 'The Earth hangs upon nothing.'&quot; And that's Job, chapter 26, verse 7? Is that how that works?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: And then he writes, &quot;It wasn't until thousands of years later that science discovered that gravity doesn't exist in space, and that this massive Earth does indeed hang upon nothing.&quot; He later went back and revised that a bit to read, that gravity doesn't exist in space as it does on Earth, and that this massive Earth does, indeed, hang upon nothing. So, essentially he kind of said the same thing.<br /> <br /> You know what this reminded me? So, remember those old commercials from the 70's for {{w|E. F. Hutton &amp; Co.|E.F. Hutton}}? Right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen. So, I'm gonna borrow that, and say, &quot;When Ray Comfort talks about science, skeptics listen, and then correct him!&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Not before laughing.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly. You have to laugh at first about this stuff, and then you can get serious. I laughed when I read one Twitterer who put this out there. He said, &quot;First of all, the Earth doesn't hang, for a start. It's not the bloody family portrait.&quot; (Laughs) Which, I love that picture about, that's exactly ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's a Christmas ornament!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Exactly, right?<br /> <br /> B: It's! In! Orbit!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Yeah, and you can't help yourself. Anywhere you start with this, you're gonna wind up correcting him, so there's really nowhere to go wrong here. So, {{w|Gravitation|gravity}} is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It's one of the four {{w|Fundamental interaction|fundamental forces}} of nature along with {{w|electromagnetism}}, and the nuclear {{w|Strong interaction|strong force}}, and the {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}! And the phenomenon of gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of {{w|spacetime}}.<br /> <br /> But Comfort was under the impression that there's no gravity in space, hence the reason why astronauts appear to float around as they do. But there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; gravity throughout the universe, right? The entire {{w|Observable universe|visible universe}} has revealed the wonders of gravity in all of space and time, and there's just boatloads of evidence to support it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, the entire structure of the known universe is basically authored by gravity. It's the most far-reaching force there is! It's like, hello!<br /> <br /> E: So, obviously, a lot of people chimed in on this, both supporters of his, and people who actually understand science, in making legitimate attempts to correct him. You know, amongst the giggles and things.<br /> <br /> So, he went ahead and corrected himself, a few hours later. Basically, here's what he said, &quot;Up until today, I was one of the ''many'' who believe there's zero gravity in space. We live and learn. Thanks to the many {{w|atheism|atheists}} who kindly corrected me.&quot; But then, he actually goes on by also saying, &quot;{{w|Isaac Newton|Sir Isaac Newton}} is the one -&quot; I'm cutting this short because it's kind of a long post. But he writes, &quot;Sir Isaac Newton is the one who so wisely noted atheism is so senseless. I will therefore try to make it a little clearer for those folks who pretend that God doesn't exist. While there is invisible gravity in space -so much for seeing is believing – this massive Earth hangs on nothing. It has no visible means of support, similar to the no means of support backing {{w|Darwinism|Darwinian evolution}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: He was wrong, but he's still right! Even though he was completely wrong. It's just unbelievable. It's astounding. He is absolutely {{w|Scientific literacy|scientifically illiterate}}. I think we could state that without fearing contradiction.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Very kind.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, he thought there was no gravity in space. You have to have absolutely no effing idea what's going on if you think that. You don't understand the first thing about physics and astronomy, right? And it's fine if somebody's not interested in science, and just doesn't have any idea about things like that, the {{w|Sherri Shepherd|Sherri Shepherds}} of the world, but he takes it a step further. In his abject ignorance of science, he uses that as a basis in order to critize ...<br /> <br /> J: To speculate! He's speculating without any ...<br /> <br /> S: No, not speculating, Jay! He's saying definitively, &quot;Hey! If the Bible isn't inspired by God, explain &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; atheists!&quot; But he's talking totally about his own complete, abject, scientific illiteracy.<br /> <br /> J: And clearly, he's unmoved, when he finds out what the truth is, like we said. No effect! Sorry! Doesn't care. That's the infuriating part of it. Okay, so, he starts off wrong. Okay, he's wrong. Then a lot of people showed him, &quot;This is what the truth is,&quot; and then he finally swallowed that, and then ... doesn't care! Didn't affect him in any way!<br /> <br /> S: Because he's not basing his beliefs on facts or logic or evidence or anything. He's {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} facts that appear to support his position. And when that's wrong, that doesn't matter! He'll just cherry pick &lt;I&gt;other&lt;/I&gt; facts. Like, he went on, &quot;Oh yeah! But gravity's invisible! So much for seeing is believing!&quot; What! It's a total {{w|Non sequitur (logic)|non sequitur}}. Even just, his interpretation of the Job passage, &quot;The Earth hangs upon nothing.&quot; That's meaningless.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> S: It doesn't even have any scientific meaning. It was written by somebody who didn't know the first thing about cosmology or physics, or astronomy.<br /> <br /> E: I liken him taking the Job quote so far out of context, this is the same way the things {{w|Nostradamus}} &quot;predicted&quot; way back when, and applying that to modern times is, there's no connection whatsoever! They have no idea basically ...<br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Feathers &lt;small&gt;(24:17)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/most-dinosaurs-may-have-had-feathers<br /> <br /> S: To finish up the news items, just two quick topics on dinosaurs. I love talking about dinosaurs. The first one has to do with how many dinosaurs probably had feathers. This has been a very fascinating story from our childhood. Rebecca, I think even you, when you were a kid, right, dinosaurs had tough, leathery skin, right? You never saw dinosaurs with feathers.<br /> <br /> But, of course, since really, {{w|Archaeopteryx}}, over a hundred years ago, the idea was that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Archeopteryx looks pretty much half dinosaur, half bird. Since then, especially since the 1980's, we've discovered a lot of feathered dinosaurs, so it wasn't just this one feathered half dinosaur, there was an entire clade, a group, of dinosaurs like {{w|Velociraptor|Velociraptors}}, et cetera, that had feathers of some type, as well as different flying dinosaurs, and other ones that had feathers but couldn't fly, and primitive birds; it's really been fleshed out tremendously.<br /> <br /> But the question remains, is how far back in the dinosaur evolutionary history do feathers go? Feathered dinosaurs are mainly found among the {{w|Theropoda|Theropods}}, which are in the branch of dinosaurs called the {{w|Saurischia|saurischians}} – which, ironically means lizard-hipped – whereas the other branch of dinosaurs, the ones that did not give rise to the birds, are the {{w|Ornithischia|ornithischians}}, which means bird-hip.<br /> <br /> B: Ha!<br /> <br /> S: But, in any case...<br /> <br /> B: How ironic is that?<br /> <br /> S: The theropods are the feathered dinosaurs. So, pretty much, at this point, we can say most theropod dinosaurs probably had feathers at some point in their life, even if it was just {{w|Down feather|downy feathers}} as young, and they may not have survived until adulthood.<br /> <br /> But recently, scientists have discovered what look like primitive feather impressions on the fossil of a neo-ornithischian dinosaur. In other words, from the other main group of dinosaurs. The common anscestor of the ornithischians and the saurichians is basically the common anscestor of all dinosaurs. Now, do you understand the implication of that?<br /> <br /> J: No!<br /> <br /> E: We have to rename dinosaurs.<br /> <br /> S: It means that all dinosaurs may have had feathers, every single dinosaur ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: It may actually go all the way back to the early days of the dinosaurs ...<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a clade.<br /> <br /> B: That's amazing. Did anybody ever even come close to even predicting this?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's incredible.<br /> <br /> B: That's fantastic.<br /> <br /> S: So, this is one fossil, I have to always say. We hate to .. you don't want to hang your hat on one piece of evidence. So, it would be nice if we could find other fossils. It's possible that these feathery filaments were only exist in a juvenile, and not adults. So, it may be that all dinosaurs had down as chicks, as baby dinosaurs, but not as adults. But still, the idea that a feather-like {{w|Integument|integumentary}} adaptation is common to most or all dinosaurs is amazing. So, if this holds up, if this turns out to be the case, that would be fascinating.<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, weren't some of the feathers ... were unique. I mean, these are feathers they had never seen before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Completely, very different structure, whatever. And also, the article, the research I read made a good comparison. They said all dinosaurs had some type of feather, just like all mammals have some type of hair, which is a nice comparison. But, they also made an interesting point. I mean, you look at an elephant - and an elephant's a mammal - not much hair going on on an elephant. There is some.<br /> <br /> So they think for the largest predators, they probably had very, very sparse feathers, if any, really, at all. Which makes sense, because they don't really need them for ...<br /> <br /> S: Temperature control.<br /> <br /> B: ... temperature control. So, I wouldn't run around thinking that, oh, {{w|Tyrannosaurus|T-Rexes}} were running around with feathers everywhere, type of thing. But who knows?<br /> <br /> S: But, it does mean that there is this potential for feather-like structures in dinosaurs as an entire clade ...<br /> <br /> B: Right.<br /> <br /> S: And think about that. So, this is getting back to the whole evidence for evolution thing. If evolution were not true, what are the odds that the group that are anatomically birds probably derived from, also had the potential ... the widespread potential to grow feather-like structures? This is exactly the kind of thing you would predict from evolution. And there's absolutely no reason for it without evolution as a unifying theory.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah. <br /> <br /> B: Steve, I know that these dinosaurs, what they found, these fossils are very special because I think they died in a lake bed, and they were very quickly covered up with a light volcanic silt, or whatever. So, that's why the resolution is so fine. But still, I can't help but thinking, &quot;You know, how many fossils have we dug up, and there was no hint of any type of feather structures on any of the big boys that all these thousands ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, for feather impressions, you need the right kind of conditions as you were saying, Bob. So this is, it may be a rare window. So, we just have to hope ... and also, this dinosaur was found outside of China, so it's the first feathered dinosaur found outside of China, which is also important. So, if we find more in various groups, and in various locations around the world. The more we find, the more evidence there is that really, all dinosaurs had some kind of potential for feathers. Or, you know, when we say, &quot;feathers,&quot; these could all just be monofilaments. They're not necessarily the fully-formed shafted feather that we ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> J: So you consider it an early feather, then, right?<br /> <br /> S: Like a downy feather, oh yeah. Or, it's also probably not on, saying, &quot;early&quot; implies that it later evolved into a bird-like feather, but it probably didn't. You know what I mean? This is in a completely separate branch. These monofilaments probably never became anything that you would think of as a feather. But it's clearly a feather-like appendage, or structure. <br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Extinction &lt;small&gt;(30:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dinosaur-extinction-revisited/<br /> <br /> S: The other dinosaur news item, this is another topic about, which I have been fascinated ever since I was a child. And that is, what wiped out the dinosaurs? Now, everybody knows the answer to this, right? What killed off the dinosaurs?<br /> <br /> R: Inability to brush their teeth, 'cause of their tiny, tiny arms.<br /> <br /> S: (Suppresses laughter) Right, exactly. The {{w|Chicxulub crater}} asteroid from 66 million years ago<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's what we said.<br /> <br /> S: at the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary. So, there's no question that 66 million years ago, a huge meteor – or a {{w|bolide}}, as they call it – whacked into the Earth at Chicxulub ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wait, Steve. Sorry, Steve. Now, bolide, isn't that a more generic term that can account for {{w|Asteroid|asteroids}} &lt;I&gt;and&lt;/I&gt; {{w|Comet|comets}}?<br /> <br /> S: Yes, because they don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, alright.<br /> <br /> S: They don't know, it was a bolide. They don't really know it was a meteor.<br /> <br /> E: And you didn't call it the K-T boundary, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: It's no longer the K-T boundary. Now it's the K-Pg extinction for {{w|Paleogene}}.<br /> <br /> J: And why didn't they send me an email when they changed that?<br /> <br /> S: I know, right? I didn't get the memo either; I just had to read it. So, anyway, it's actually more of a controversy than I was aware of until maybe a couple of years ago. I started to realize this is actually a little more controversial, that the meteor impact 66 million years ago was pretty much the main cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Paleontology|paleontologists}} are still debating among themselves whether or not dinosaurs as a group were already on the way out. One question is did the dinosaurs survive past the K-Pg boundary. I think that has been pretty much put to bed, and the answer is no. That no dinosaur survived past the K-Pg boundary. So, clearly, that is the punctuation mark at the end of dinosaurs' time on Earth. But the question is, were they already in decline, and on their way out, and was the asteroid or the bolide just the {{w|Coup de grâce|coup de grâce}}, that it was the final blow that wiped them out.<br /> <br /> B: That's the essense of the controversy right there.<br /> <br /> S: That's the controversy, that's it. Was it solely responsible, or was it just one among many factors. The other factors that paleontologists discuss are, 1, there were fluctuating sea levels at that time; 2, there was a fluctuating climate at that time in terms of the temperature of the Earth; and 3, and probably the biggest one, is the volcanism and the {{w|Deccan Traps}} located in India. They were massively volcanically active; poisoning the atmosphere, changing the climate; and that could put a lot of stress on dinosaurs and other large animals at the time.<br /> <br /> So, remember at the K-Pg extinction, all large {{w|Vertebrate}} groups, dinosaurs, {{w|Pleisiosauria|Pleisiosaurs}}, {{w|Mosasaur|mosasaurs}}, and {{w|Pterosaur|Pterosaurs}} went extinct, as did many species of {{w|Plankton}}, tropical invertebrates, and reef dwellers. So, it was a widespread extinction. {{w|Mammal|Mammals}}, birds, and insects actually did quite well. They did fine.<br /> <br /> It definitely wasn't something that was unique to dinosaurs. The reason we're talking about this now is a recent review of all existing evidence, trying to address this specific question of were the dinosaurs in decline prior to the meteor impact. And the answer to that is mostly no. A careful review of the evidence shows that there essentially is no significant scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the dinosaurs were in decline at the time the meteor hit. And, therefore, the meteor probably the primary, if not the sole cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> B: That's good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah,<br /> <br /> B: I like it.<br /> <br /> S: What you thought all along turns out to be true, and you can now comfortably ignore this controversy you didn't know about. But, the authors do hold out one tiny little exception.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god, what now?<br /> <br /> J: Oh boy!<br /> <br /> S: There was a slight decline in the species richness of North American ornithischians, but not therapods. So, there was a regional decline in one type of dinosaurs, mainly plant-eaters, the ornithischians. And they said, &quot;Maybe that made dinosaurs more vulnerable to extinction – to the collapse of their ecosystem.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, what's interesting is that that one tiny, little speculation is what the media ran with. And the headlines – even on sites that are normally very good, like {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature News}}, and the {{w|BBC}} – are reporting it as, &quot;The dinosaurs died because of bad luck.&quot; One even said that if the meteor had hit several million years earlier or later, the dinosaurs would have survived. That is &lt;I&gt;not&lt;/I&gt; what the paper concludes.<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: The paper concludes there was basically no decline in dinosaurs, and the meteor wiped them out. And then there was this one little, &quot;Yeah, okay, but the ornithischians were a little bit in decline in North America only, and maybe that made them more vulnerable. We see this pattern all the time, this ... half of what caught my interest with this story because I read the headline, I'm like, &quot;Wow! Really? That's pretty unusual.&quot; And then I read the paper, it's like, the paper's not saying this!<br /> <br /> The main evidence is not what the headlines go for. They pick out some little, tiny, little post script, but that's the thing that has the sexy headline. The dinosaurs died from bad luck! <br /> <br /> B: Holy crap!<br /> <br /> E: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> B: That's pathetic. Fail!<br /> <br /> S: Total fail. Total fail reporting this story. Just the way it gets translated is just unbelievable. And you know, it also shows, you gotta go ... if I just read the press releases, that's the impression I would have walked away with. But you got to go to the original source. You read the paper, and it's like ... I read the whole paper. Because the paper actually is fascinating.<br /> <br /> Anyone who's interested in this topic, the controversy over the extinction of the dinosaurs, this paper is an awesome primer. It goes over everything really well. And then in the discussion, it's very clear, that other than this one tiny exception, the evidence does not support any kind of general decline in dinosaurs as a group prior to the impact of the meteor.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(36:51)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> * Answer to last week: Dot Matrix Printer<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, Who's that Noisy?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, last week's Who's the Noisy, you remember this little tune? Remember this little turn? Remember this? Yeah.<br /> <br /> (Scratchy sound playing {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> S: Heh, that's awesome.<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Evan, can I ask you a question?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, sir.<br /> <br /> J: When we recorded the show last week, did I guess correctly?<br /> <br /> E: Jay, you did guess correctly. You were the first one!<br /> <br /> B: Jay, it seems so obvious now. (Laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Jay, tell us what that was!<br /> <br /> J: Tell us what you've won! That is the old {{w|Dot matrix printing|dot matrix printers}}.<br /> <br /> E: Remember those, dot matrix!<br /> <br /> J: Yes, so the drum beat is the actual feed of the paper. And then the notes, somebody figured out, I guess, a way to print different things with it, you can get different frequencies out of it.<br /> <br /> S: You could watch the whole thing on [http://youtu.be/u8I6qt_Z0Cg YouTube]<br /> <br /> J: Oh, okay. I didn't do that. I didn't cheat.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I mean, after Evan confirmed that, yes, it was a dot-matrix printer, I watched the whole thing on YouTube, and you could see what it's printing. You know, it's just dots. It's not text or anything.<br /> <br /> J: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: A dot-matrix printer?<br /> <br /> S: It does the whole song really well. It's very funny to watch.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> E: It is, and of course, you know, these things are not purposed to create music or stuff. But, hey, give people toys or technology, and they'll do all sorts of things with it that it wasn't supposed to do, though!<br /> <br /> S: They have far too much time on their hands.<br /> <br /> E: I suppose, so ...<br /> <br /> B: I love people like that! I love 'em!<br /> <br /> E: And it generated a ton of email, people having enjoyed that, realizing exactly what it was, expressing their own little comments about it, it was really cool to read. I spent a lot of time this week, 'cause there were hundreds of correct answers. But there can only be one winner each week. Rob McDermit, your name was chosen. Congratulations, you are this week's winner.<br /> <br /> And I want to send out a thank you to Liam Bond, who's also a listener, who actually sent me the link for this particular noisy, from last week. So, thank you, Liam. I appreciate that.<br /> <br /> S: Awesome. And what do you got for this week?<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this week, here's a voice you may recognize. You might not, but it's interesting nonetheless. Here we go.<br /> <br /> ?: (Male voice) I went nuts! I just didn't know what happened. I just lost it, and I just became a poor actor in New York. Like being a star student at {{w|Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT}}. I don't know. You tell me. I just ... crazy, I suppose. Swedish ... I don't know how to explain it.<br /> <br /> E: And, go ahead and submit your answer. Correct or not, we don't care. We want to hear from you. wtn@theskepticsguide.org is our email address. Or you can go ahead and post it on our forums, [http://sguforums.com sguforums.com]. Look for the sub thread called Who's that Noisy for episode 473. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, Evan.<br /> <br /> == Interview With Bill Nye &lt;small&gt;(41:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * http://billnye.com/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we recorded a really fun interview with Bill Nye the Science Guy while we were at {{w|The Amaz!ng Meeting|TAM}}. So, we're gonna play some of that interview for you now!<br /> <br /> (Music plays)<br /> <br /> S: We're here at TAM 2014, and it's our distinct pleasure to have with us back again, Bill Nye, the Science Guy! Bill, welcome back to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> BN: It's so good to be back.<br /> <br /> S: So, Bill, I asked you before we started if you wouldn't mind if we asked you about the {{w|Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate|Ham debate}}. I'm sure everyone's asking you about that. So, tell us how you feel. How did that go? Would you do it again? What do you think?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, it went great, for me, or us. I don't think I'd do it again because I don't know how much more ground there is to cover. However, I remind us that the audience is not Ken Ham, or Ken Ham's congregation, or ministry, as he calls it. The audience is everybody on the web. So, 3 and a half million views. And that's seriously, that's just in the first – what's it been – four months. It'll, I presume, just keep getting bigger and bigger.<br /> <br /> Everywhere I go, people watched it! I'm getting my shoes shined today in the {{w|McCarran International Airport|McCarran Airport}}. This guy, through a half dozen people. &quot;Loved the debate, man! Way to go!&quot; People I've not dealt with yet are, &quot;I hate you! You suck!&quot; And they're coming. But I haven't met many of them yet.<br /> <br /> S: I think that – we all watched the debate, of course – I mean, we ...<br /> <br /> J: It was so cool!<br /> <br /> S: It was cool!<br /> <br /> BN: It's so nice of you guys!<br /> <br /> B: It was an event! Come on!<br /> <br /> S: I love debates. I mean, personally. A lot of people in our movement are really shy about debates, but I think they're great. So, you did a fabulous job. I think, what you did really well, to be honest with you, was you just stuck to science communicating, and you just told the science end of the spectrum really well. And I think that might have, in the end ... I think some people were worried you weren't addressing Ham's points, but he doesn't really have any points.<br /> <br /> BN: I was gonna say, what is it beyond that he's got a book?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you're better off just saying, this is the science, and isn't it cool, and let's all really be enthusiastic about science. And maybe that was actually the best approach to go.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I thought the most important thing, as I will say today many times, you may be right, if I'm not right. The most important thing is to keep your cool. Keep my cool. Because these guys say such extraordinary things. It's just ...<br /> <br /> S: Easy to lose your head.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: Bill, how did you prepare for the debate?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, that's a great question. And thank you for asking.<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> BN: So, first of all, I was overconfident. Then I got to thinking about it, and I was terrified.<br /> <br /> (Loud laughter)<br /> <br /> B: It's probably healthy.<br /> <br /> BN: Then, I went to see {{w|Eugenie Scott}}, and you guys know [http://ncse.com/users/josh Josh Rosenau]? He's the second in command there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, okay, alright.<br /> <br /> BN: He's the head of resear- he's very good. And they really coached me, along with several other people from {{w|National Center for Science Education}}.<br /> <br /> S: 'Genie's a sci, by the way. She's here.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, and I want to see her talk! Or hear her ... Wait, I'll do both. (Rogues laugh) So she really coached me. And then, do you guys know {{w|Donald Prothero|Don Prothero}}?<br /> <br /> E: Oh, absolutely, yes. Good man.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I made good. I told him I'd buy him dinner; and I bought him dinner night before last. He really helped out. And {{w|Michael Shermer}}. We met for lunch at Michael's house, and those people really coached me. And then I did some research. I mean I spent a little time. And one thing has led to another, and I'm writing a book. I mean, I've written a book. 89,000 words. And it comes out the first week of November.<br /> <br /> J: This is about the whole experience.<br /> <br /> BN: It's about, nah, it's just called, &quot;Evolution: The Science of Creation.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ooh! That's a great title!<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, I'll show ya.<br /> <br /> E: Nice turn.<br /> <br /> BN: In my slide show – it's all about me-e-e. (Rogues laugh) I have the cover, which I got yesterday, Thursday. I got, they sent the latest version of the cover. It's a JPEG.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: So, this is really exciting, but I mention this for me, for us, we have this whole thing. We're always preaching to the choir. But don't you feel like it's growing?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, no question.<br /> <br /> S: I don't like the term &quot;preaching to the choir.&quot; We're educating people who are interested in science and critical thinking.<br /> <br /> BN: And the other thing is, this thing that we all humans are so kooky for, it's a community. That's what TAM's all about, right? Like, you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking? Wow! What a relief, right? As I say, this wouldn't matter except for kids. By kids, I mean students, science students. And that's why it's really important to me. We cannot raise a generation of students who are scientifcally illiterate, and without critical thinking skill, and so I feel that that debate really has done that. Now, a lot of people thought I shouldn't do it.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a lot of skeptics said it.<br /> <br /> E: Because there's reasons why. We've seen historical instances in which the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish#Debates Gish Gallop] has been employed by some of these people, and they run roughshod over ...<br /> <br /> BN: Let me just ask you guys, because it is all about (whispers) ''me.''<br /> <br /> B: We don't deny that! We agree with you with that.<br /> <br /> BN: What did I not screw up? I mean, I did it the way I was gonna do it.<br /> <br /> S: My take was what I said already. It was one strategy to just ignore him, and just to make the case for science and evolution. That's actually a good strategy, because once you're on the defensive, you lose because he can create misconceptions in seconds that would take you dozens of minutes to correct. So just forget him.<br /> <br /> So that's one approach. It's kind of like the non-debate debate. The art of fighting without fighting.<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: So ... I also totally agree, because I get this question a lot. I'm just in the middle of a debate with a {{w|9/11 Truth movement|9/11 Truther}}. People would be like, &quot;Why are you doing this?&quot; It's like, he's not the audience! I don't care about him. I am talking to people who want information, who are on the fence who will be compelled by this. And I'm gonna teach them some critical thinking and facts!<br /> <br /> BN: Or just the doubt's introduced to their minds. That's the big thing.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, the one thing our listeners will be very upset about if we don't bring this up, though. The one criticism that does come up is, &quot;But Ham exploited this to raise money for his ...&quot;<br /> <br /> BN: Here's my claim.<br /> <br /> S: You tell me.<br /> <br /> BN: It's not over yet.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> BN: So, he held an online press conference. I don't know if you guys watched that.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't.<br /> <br /> BN: And there's no members of the press at a press conference in {{w|Answers in Genesis}}, it's all their own guys.<br /> <br /> B: Is that afterwards, or before?<br /> <br /> BN: Afterwards, weeks later. So, two things. I got a letter saying that the debate did not influence it at all from a Mark Looy, who's second in command at Answers in ... maybe he's actually the head of Answers in Genesis. And saying it had no influence at all. And then they had this press conference saying it was the wind that blew ... but journalists in {{w|Kentucky}} are looking hard into this. They're trying to follow the money. And I have heard two people who've looked at the {{w|Irs_tax_forms#Fiduciary_reporting|990's}}, you know what I mean?<br /> <br /> Now, this is hearsay, you guys, this is the worst form of evidence. But he may – and this is may, not verified yet, they are trying to find out – but he may have leveraged the loan for the Arc Park against the {{w|Creation Museum}}, and you know, his attendance is going down.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: Because it's generally believed that his attendance is going down because he doesn't have new exhibits. This is in museum talk. So, what I did, you guys, I didn't give money to (inaudible), but I took the money from the debate, and I gave it to a planetary society.<br /> <br /> E: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: And I also gave it to the Kentucky Museum of Science, or maybe it's called {{w|Kentucky Science Center|Kentucky Children's Museum}}, and the {{w|Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal|Cincinnati Museum of Science}}. You know, trying to bracket him. So, it's not ... in other words, I will say, in the short term, you may be right. But in the medium term, I think he's gonna have a lot of trouble.<br /> <br /> E: The final reckoning is not in yet.<br /> <br /> BN: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's only June of the first few months, people!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> S: That's long though, attention span, for the public.<br /> <br /> BN: What'd you say? I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Gotcha for a second.<br /> <br /> BN: Hilarious!<br /> <br /> J: My only critique, is that you could have structured the debate to handle one or two topics, and had a moderator keep people on topic, which ... but I totally agree with Steve. After watching the debate, we were ... definitely more than once, you did such a good job, of just being ...<br /> <br /> E: Love you man!<br /> <br /> J: Well, you insulated yourself! You were immune to him just going off on these insane tangents <br /> <br /> BN: He was galloping gishy wash.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: He was trying, he tried. But overall, I just had a conversation with people an hour ago about this. What was the net result? I'm not sure. I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: It's hard to measure, but ...<br /> <br /> J: It is hard to measure.<br /> <br /> S: I certainly think I encountered a lot of people who like, excited about science because I saw you on that debate.<br /> <br /> BN: That's so nice!<br /> <br /> S: That's a win!<br /> <br /> BN: I've met several science teachers, and of course, this is a self-selecting group, who use it in class. They say they've played it in class, this spring.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> BN: Wow, yeah. That was not the plan. Cool.<br /> <br /> B: Have you guys seen ... they had pictures of people holding up these goofy questions. I think they were people that were actually at the event, and they wrote questions, trying to explain, &quot;Hey, Bill! What do you say about &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; type of thing.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio 22 Questions for Bill Nye]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: If we're descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ...<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> B: Right, that's a perfect example!<br /> <br /> BN: What purpose to monkeys serve, exactly?<br /> <br /> B: So, there was a lot of those pictures, and a lot of websites have been created showing what those people said, and then having somebody else hold another card responding to it, and they were just beautiful lessons on how to deal with ... I know, but it came out of it, and it's just one of the things that I just loved reading and making them look so ridiculous.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.businessinsider.com/22-responses-to-buzzfeeds-22-messages-from-creationists-2014-2 22 Answers for creationists]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: To us. But to his followers ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Oh yeah. But, so what? Like you said, you didn't convert anyone.<br /> <br /> S: They were all gotcha questions. They were gotcha questions that reveal they don't know anything about the science of evolution.<br /> <br /> BN: It's troubling, because we're the most technologically advanced society – you could say Japan – Finland is very, actually, New Zealand is very good. But this is where the iPhone's designed, right? And yet, we have these people in our midst that have no understanding of where an iPhone comes from, for example.<br /> <br /> J: Or don't even care to question it.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah. So that's why we got ... and the big thing, you guys, for me, the critical issues are climate change and the future of science education, and engineers. So, Ken Ham denies climate change. I mean, that's one of his things. He's doing all he can to indoctrinate young people in that area, Kentucky, mostly.<br /> <br /> E: He may see an income stream from going that approach too. A new revenue stream ...<br /> <br /> BN: He does.<br /> <br /> E: ... yeah, by appealing to the people who deny that climate change is happening.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I'm sure that they're the same people. I mean, if you were scientifically aware, you wouldn't ... I don't think you'd give Answers in Genesis any money, would you?<br /> <br /> J: (Laughs) Probably not.<br /> <br /> B: But speaking of climate change, I saw you on {{w|Last Week Tonight with John Oliver|John Oliver's show}}.<br /> <br /> BN: That was big fun.<br /> <br /> B: And that was fantastic! I just loved it because none of the people actually stress that point, that you can't have the scientific position here, and then a denier here, when there's ... the {{w|false balance}} is ridiculous. And he just brought, like, what, 97 scientists on.<br /> <br /> BN: 96. So I was 97.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, but they were all speaking in this caucophany.<br /> <br /> BN: I just noticed, you guys, what a great thing it was. It's {{w|Mother's Day}}, alright? And these are actors. &quot;Sure! I'll be an extra on Mother's Day. Sure, okay.&quot; (Rogues laugh) Just shows ya, it's a tough business. But everybody was really cool, really gracious, and people were excited to participate. John Oliver's really come into his own.<br /> <br /> B: Really!<br /> <br /> E: Oh boy.<br /> <br /> B: He's been nailing it on his show.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, humor's a great vehicle for exposing nonsense.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, this business of irony. There are books written about the nature of laughter, and what you find ironic. And you'll be shocked to learn that what Michael Shermer calls &quot;socially liberal&quot; - is that what he says? Or is it liberal social? Socially liberal people have a much more highly developed sense of irony. And this is from brain scans. I didn't ... not my thing!<br /> <br /> E: It's not my thing, it's a fact!<br /> <br /> BN: I've been reading this book, &quot;[http://www.amazon.com/Ha-The-Science-When-Laugh/dp/product-description/0465031706 Ha]!&quot; about the nature of laughter, and it's really fascinating.<br /> <br /> J: So, Bill, tell us about the things that you're doing with the government to help affect change.<br /> <br /> BN: The government? Well, just when the White House calls, I show up.<br /> <br /> S: You've got the red phone? The hotline?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, sort of. You may not know, but there's something called the {{w|Office of Science and Technology Policy}}. Somewhat disclosure – a guy who works there was a grad student under the guy who started the Space Policy Institute. So, he'll call me, or text me. Or he'll have somebody call me or text me. And if the President asked you to come to the {{w|White House}} science fair, you show up, sorry man.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;{{w|Maker Faire}}&quot;, a few weeks ago, and that was cool. These people make kooky stuff in order, or learning the technology, developing the technology that allows us to make things that were not possible to make. You know, I'm a mechanical engineer, and now we're all into {{w|3D printing|additive manufacturing}}, have you heard this expression?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: There didn't use to be any such thing. There was {{w|lost-wax casting}}.<br /> <br /> E: Right<br /> <br /> BN: Or was, still is ... and moulding, and stuff. And that's in a sense, additive manufacturing, but not like printing rocket engine nozzles.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, right?<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> J: I know, tell me about it.<br /> <br /> E: Exciting.<br /> <br /> J: I can't believe that.<br /> <br /> BN: It's cool. It's exciting. <br /> <br /> S: How involved are you, at all, as a planetary society, with the Dragon, or other ...<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, so {{w|Elon Musk}} was on our board for many years, or a few years, but he had to recuse himself when he got the government contract for commercial crewed space flight. {{w|SpaceX}} has gotten, this is my memory, but it's right around $500 million, right around half a billion dollars from NASA. And so has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_Corporation Sierra Nevada Space], and another one.<br /> <br /> J: The {{w|Orion (spacecraft)|Orion}}?<br /> <br /> BN: The Orion! Yeah, {{w|Boeing}} has also gotten money. So, the Orion, everybody, is a compromise. But that's the nature of politics.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think? What's the bottom line? What's your feeling about the Orion? Is that gonna be a useful addition, or is it gonna be a wasteful boondoggle, or somewhere in between?<br /> <br /> BN: I'm on camera, right? We are hopeful that it's very successful.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> S: (Quiet) Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: No, you guys, you can go to {{w|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station|Cape Canaveral}}, and there is the constellation gantry tower. You know what I mean by this? This thing that holds up a rocket, that was never built because it was underfunded from the get-go, and people presumed, as has happened so often in that past, that once you've got a program started, people will just keep it going no matter what. Space man, this is America. This is what we're gonna do.<br /> <br /> But after a while, somebody said, &quot;Wait, you're way off in your budget. You're just too far off.&quot; And Orion's what's left over from that.<br /> <br /> J: And it's actually derivative of a few different attempts, right?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, everybody, it's fairly popular when you run for President, if you guys go that route, to say we're gonna go to the {{w|Moon}}. It's really popular to say we're gonna go to {{w|Mars}}. But the scale of it, as this guy we work with – we have a lobbyist at the Planetary Society. He says these people in {{w|United States Congress|Congress}} think it's {{w|Pepsi}} or {{w|Coca-Cola|Coke}}, the Moon or Mars.<br /> <br /> No, one's three days, the other is three years. Keeping people alive for three years in deep space with radiation, with no gravity, it's just not so trivial. Not so easy.<br /> <br /> E: All kinds of problems.<br /> <br /> J: Keeping them from going crazy in a spaceship for three years is a challenge.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I didn't write this joke; it was told to me by Congressman {{w|Adam Schiff}}, who, his district used to include JPL,{{w|Jet Propulsion Laboratory| Jet Propulsion Lab}}. Now it doesn't, it's {{w|Judy Chu}}, but now, it still includes {{w|California Institute of Technology|Caltech}}, so he's in that {{w|Pasadena, California|Pasedena}} space community.<br /> <br /> Alright, so they send this mission to Mars that's auto-return. What's it called, Mars Frontier? Anyway, it's a husband and wife that are of an age where they can no longer have children. So they fly out – and this will be possible in the year 2018. There's an automatic return if you get the trajectory just so, the orbit of Mars will sling you right back to Earth. So, you won't land, you'll just woo-o-o, come back. Take pictures, and I guess we (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> So, in the context of this joke, gentlemen, the spacecraft and everything's going well, but on the way back, suddenly there's no communication. There's no words from the thing. It automatically gets in orbit around the Earth, no communication. They go up with another spacecraft, and look in the window, and both the husband and wife have been dismembered, been torn limb from limb. How is this possible? And then, Adam Schiff says, &quot;Well, you've never been married.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, to your point, this is a very serious concern. 400 days with the same people in a room as big as this table. There's some trouble.<br /> <br /> E: People are still people.<br /> <br /> B: To me, the biggest problem is the radiation that you would encounter. No one has any .. is anyone addressing that?<br /> <br /> BN: Yep, well people<br /> <br /> B: Is it a deal breaker?<br /> <br /> BN: ... argue the radiation is not that strong.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> BN: But I'm not sure that's true. And so, by the way, changing it back to ... and the Planetary Society, we hope, again, to launch, to fly, this thing called the {{w|Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment}}. Did you hear about that? LIFE? So, it's a titanium puck with several microbes that are very well characterized and purified, and properly freeze-dried, and some water bears, the {{w|Tardigrade|tardigrades}}.<br /> <br /> B: Tardigrades, they're awesome! They're incredible.<br /> <br /> E: Good imitation!<br /> <br /> J: You're gonna see if they're gonna die?<br /> <br /> BN: I can't see under the table? And then we'd send them, we were gonna send them to Phobos and back, the moon of Mars. But, it crashed. It was a Russian rocket. {{w|Fobos Grunt}}, it was called. Grunt is Russian, my understanding, is Russian for soil. Anyway, it was gonna scoop up some {{w|Phobos (moon)|Phobos}}, but it crashed in the {{w|Pacific Ocean}}.<br /> <br /> So, we might get a chance to fly that again. And, to your point, we'll see if they can take this radiation. Then, presumably, they'd come back, and we'd light 'em up again, put warm water on them and see what happens. So, like one of the questions ... do you know radiodurans?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Deinococcus radiodurans|Radiodurans}}! {{w|Extremophile}}! <br /> <br /> BN: Who doesn't love those?<br /> <br /> B: Right? It's my favourite {{w|microorganism}}.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, way to go.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, why does that bacterium have the capability to withstand radiation? This is a cool, evolutionary ...<br /> <br /> J: Does it absorb it?<br /> <br /> B: No, it blows apart the {{w|DNA}}, and it can reform. It's amazing stuff. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It reconstitutes its own DNA.<br /> <br /> S: It's also partly that it's simplified its DNA as much as possible, so there are fewer opportunities for it being destroyed.<br /> <br /> BN: No, but here's the thing. Here's what we love to be charmed by in {{w|astrobiology}}, not quite science fiction, thinking out louding, is maybe Mars was hit by an impactor 3 billion years ago. A living thing got into space on a meteorite before it became a meteorite, and just in 17,000 quick years, in a home in orbit, it made its way to the Earth, and we are all ...<br /> <br /> E: So we are all Martians.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Panspermia}}, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's just a cool thing to wonder about, and it's a wonderful thing to investigate. We have the capability, this generation of people, to send the right spacecraft there and look into that question more carefully. I mean, if we were to discover evidence of life on Mars, it would change the world!<br /> <br /> J: Say it.<br /> <br /> E: (Accent) Change the world!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:03:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Item #1]: A recently published analysis indicates that, if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20-40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> [http://blogs.chapman.edu/press-room/2014/07/23/the-quantum-cheshire-cat-can-a-particle-be-separated-from-its-properties/ Item #2]: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself, so the particle was in one location while its magnetic moment was in another.<br /> [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uoia-pun072814.php Item #3]: Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity, in an indium alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real, and one fake. Then I ask my expert skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Are you guys ready for this week?<br /> <br /> R: We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah. As ready as last week.<br /> <br /> S: Nah, there's no real theme this week.<br /> <br /> R: Ah, okay.<br /> <br /> S: No theme. Okay, here we go: Item #1: A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 – 40% of the world will have serious {{w|Water scarcity|water shortage}} by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> <br /> Item #2: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So the particle was in one location while its {{w|magnetic moment}} was in another. And Item #3: Researchers have successfully created {{w|Cooper pair|Cooper pairs}}, the hallmark of {{w|superconductivity}} in an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium indium] alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> R: What?!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> E: You heard him.<br /> <br /> R: Why couldn't there have been a theme, and the theme was {{w|Cheetah|cheetahs}}, or {{w|Sloth|sloths}}?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, cuddly animals or ...<br /> <br /> R: Instead, the theme is shit Rebecca doesn't know! Again! I'm getting sick of this, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Things that go meow.<br /> <br /> B: I don't mind!<br /> <br /> R: Ugh! Bob, go first.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Bob is going last. Evan, you go first.<br /> <br /> R: Ugh!<br /> <br /> E: Okay. Steve, I'm gonna start with the first one, in which you wrote, &quot;A recently published analysis indicates that blah, blah, blah,&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> S: Yada yada<br /> <br /> E: If we continue our current mix of electricity generation, okay, I buy that. 20 – 40% of the world will have serious water shortage! Okay, why is that? By 2020? And there'll be a global water shortage by 2040? I don't know. This smacks of other things we've kind of heard about in the past, in which these sorts of predictions are made, and they don't always turn out to, I think, be as serious as this. That's not to say it's not a serious issue, but these things tend to get I think, overestimated, and maybe a little over hyped. I don't know if that's one of these.<br /> <br /> Well, moving on to the second one, &quot;Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle.&quot; That's mind boggling, frankly. I don't think there's any other way to put it. Particle was in one location. It's magnetic moment (laughs) was in another. Oh, I've never heard that term, &quot;Magnetic moment,&quot; before.<br /> <br /> J: I know! I thought that was odd.<br /> <br /> B: Where you been?<br /> <br /> E: What? Magnetic moment?<br /> <br /> R: I'm really glad he said that, because I assumed I was the only person who didn't know.<br /> <br /> E: Bob, tell me one time that those words have ever been spoken like that on this show. I can't remember a single time. We've never talked about the magnetic moment of particles, never!<br /> <br /> B: You know, I bet I've mentioned it a couple times in the last 470 episodes.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I bet he has.<br /> <br /> E: Some listener will correct me on that if it's out there, but I frankly, I don't remember.<br /> <br /> B: Frankly, I forget what we talk about last week, dude. Come on.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this is too wild, I think, to not be true. Why the hell, Steve, would you throw this in here? This is, you're really trying to trip us up here. And how they've done it, who the hell knows? High speed collisions, you know? Whatever.<br /> <br /> The last one, researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs. An indium alloy at near room temperature. &lt;I&gt;In&lt;/I&gt; an indium alloy at near room temperature. Okay. Indium, huh? So, basically, have we actually hit the gold standard here.<br /> <br /> S: The holy grail.<br /> <br /> E: Well, I mean, is this some sort of ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Cold fusion}}?<br /> <br /> E: ... what were we talking about. Cold fusion! Thank you. Kind of thing. It's kind of what we're talking about 'cause of the whole room temperature thing. That seems to be very, very ... I'll go with my gut and say that I think the water shortage one is the fiction. I think there's some merit to it, there's something going on. I think that those estimates are too soon though. We may have a serious problem maybe a hundred years from now, but not 5, 8, one generation from now. I think that's an exaggeration. So, that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Jay.<br /> <br /> J: Okay, this first one, very smart, Steve. This first one about the water, the water shortage. I've read quite a bit about that. I've heard about it. I think I've seen a TV show about the water shortage claims that are coming, and a lot of this hype about, are we shipping all of our water to China, and everything? I don't know.<br /> <br /> I do think though, that there may be some truth in this, but I'm not quite sure that this news item itself is completely true. It seems plausible that we could have water shortages. I just don't know, Steve, the connection here with electricity. I'm a little confused about.<br /> <br /> Okay, the second one about the particle being separated from its magnetic moment. I kind of agree with Evan. It's an oddball item, and it seems to be either that they tried to do it, and they couldn't do it. I just don't see a good fake here.<br /> <br /> This last one, however, I would think that if this happened, the way that Steve is saying it, that there'd be nothing preventing my browser from exploding in my face with news items coming up about room temperature superconductivity. So I'm gonna say that the third one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's where I was leaning. The only one of these that I can even really parse is the one about electricity generation and water shortage. And yeah, I do know that there is a connection between those two. I think that it's because nuclear power plants and coal plants too, maybe, require a lot of water for cooling. That one makes sense to me, and, yeah, global water shortage by 2040, that can mean a lot of things. It's kind of vague, what kind of shortage are we talking about? We obviously already have problems with droughts and stuff in parts of the United States, but also, we fly drinking water from Fiji into our Starbucks. So ...<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah! {{w|Fiji}} water? Do you not know about Fiji water? Fiji water literally takes the only potable water in Fiji, and leaves the residents to drink sewage water. Fun times. So (Laughs) yeah. Global water shortage, okay, probably something that majorly affects the developing nations more, but yeah.<br /> <br /> So, I'm going between the other two. I don't know what a magnetic moment is. I assumed it's something like it's position, in space or something. I don't know. Why not? But yeah, the room temperature thing. I was wondering if it was something like cold fusion-esque, and Evan and Jay seem to think so. And so, I think, yeah. If that's what this has to do with, then, yeah, I find that the least believable. So I'm going to go with the Cooper pairs at room temperature being the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: A-a-and, Bob.<br /> <br /> B: Alright, the water shortage, these numbers seem a little dramatic to me. I always heard it's coming. 20 – 40%! You know, 6 years, potentially? Seri ... and 2040 ... what is a global water shortage? How extensive? How global would that be? But I don't have huge problems with that.<br /> <br /> The second one, yeah, {{w|quantum mechanics}} is crazy! Absolutely, I totally buy this. I mean, you talking about things like {{w|Quantum entanglement|entanglement}} and {{w|Quantum superposition|superposition}}, yeah, I could totally see this. It's a little surprising to me, but you gotta just learn to roll with quantum mechanics, unless of course, the claims are pseudoscientific. But, so yeah, that one doesn't surprise me. I really, really hope that's true, 'cause that's fantastic.<br /> <br /> Yeah, I got a problem with the third one. Cooper pairs, come on. Room temperature? No. We're not there yet. And I have to agree with Jay that this would be all over. This would be huge. That's the holy grail, right there! Room temperature. <br /> <br /> S: (Scottish accent) The Grail!<br /> <br /> B: (inaudiable) I remember first hearing about high temperature superconductivity back, what Steve, '90's? Early '90's? No, late '80's maybe.<br /> <br /> S: Something like that.<br /> <br /> B: And I'm thinking, &quot;Oh boy!&quot; You know, and now, twenty-something, thirty years later, it's still mysterious. So, yeah, I'm just not buying that we've got that yet. I mean, I really hope I'm wrong on this one, but I severely doubt it, so that's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, well, you all agree with #2, so let's start there. Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So, the particle was in one place, while it's magnetic moment was in another. You guys all think this one is science ...<br /> <br /> R: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: and this one is ... So you guys don't know what a magnetic moment is?<br /> <br /> R: Well, Bob ... I <br /> <br /> J: I know what it is!<br /> <br /> E: It's when you look across the room, and you stare at that special person in the eyes, and you have a connection that you can't quite explain.<br /> <br /> R: (Singing) This magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so the magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantitiy that determines the torque-able experienced in an external {{w|magnetic field}}.<br /> <br /> B: You are correct, sir!<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, it's basically a property of the magnetic, it's own magnetism, think about it that way. A bar {{w|magnet}}, an {{w|electron}}, a {{w|molecule}}, and a {{w|planet}} all have magnetic moments. And apparently, so do {{w|neutrons}}. This one is science. And Bob's right. That wacky quantum mechanics can do anything, apparently.<br /> <br /> B: Almost.<br /> <br /> S: Very ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Deus ex machina}} of Science or Fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: So, what the scientists did was they used a neutron {{w|Interferometry|interferometer}}. Ever hear of that, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you take a beam of neutrons, you split them into two paths, or the neutrons could basically take one of two ...<br /> <br /> J: The two paths, I know.<br /> <br /> B: What?<br /> <br /> J: You actually described it pretty well, Steve. Now, taking that to the next step though, when you decouple these {{w|Electric power conversion|power converters}} ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: and you cross phase them through the actual early, early {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} converter type systems.<br /> <br /> B: (Snickering) Java ...<br /> <br /> J: What you get is a semi crossed {{w|Parallax|paralaxed}} {{w|Paralysis|paralyzation}} of the {{w|Coma|comatose}} {{w|Crematory|cremators}}.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Did you get the power converters at {{w|Hitachi station}}?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Technobabble}}!<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now, what really happened was, you could send this beam of neutrons simultaneously down two paths! This is standard quantium mechanics, right?<br /> <br /> J: Are you saying there's two paths you can go down, but in the long run, it's not too late to change the road you're on?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct, because the neutrons can decide later if they went down Path A, or Path B, right? They go down both simultaneously until they interact with something, then they have to choose the path. That's standard quantum mechanics. But what they were able to do in this experiment was by aligning the magnetic moments of the two streams, and then selecting for one stream, they could select for neutrons that had to go through one path. Does that make sense? They basically filtered out one of the two paths.<br /> <br /> So now they have, even though those streams came together again, they could select out the neutrons that chose Path A, and filter out all the neutrons that chose Path B. But at the same time, they could also align the magnetic moment of the neutrons, and they did it differently for the two paths. And what they were able to show was that the neutrons at the other end went down Path A, but their magnetic moment essentially went down Path B. Does that make sense?<br /> <br /> E: Uh ...<br /> <br /> B: That's sweet as hell, man.<br /> <br /> E: Sure!<br /> <br /> B: I love quantum mechanics.<br /> <br /> S: So, they separated the particle from its own magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's ...<br /> <br /> B: I love it!<br /> <br /> S: Crazy quantum mechanics. Alright, so that one is science. So, I guess we'll go on to #3. Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity in an indium alloy at near room temperature. Bob, Jay, and Rebecca think this one is fiction. Evan thinks this one is science. And this one is ... so you guys are all assuming that creating Cooper pairs ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god.<br /> <br /> S: ... is equal to superconductivity.<br /> <br /> R: Look, I don't know, Steve.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I am!<br /> <br /> S: What if they were able to create Cooper pairs even though the material itself wasn't superconducting? Bob, you know what Cooper pairs are.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, the electrons get bound together, and they can just slide through, and not be disturbed by any part of the material. It's one of the hallmarks of a special class of superconductivity, but, yeah, technically, you're right. And if it's true, I'm gonna kill you.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Well ...<br /> <br /> E: On his birthday?<br /> <br /> S: It is technically correct, but this one is the fiction!<br /> <br /> R: Hurray!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: So ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! I got one right!<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Cooper pairs are basically superconductivity. But, this is based on a real item. I always get a chuckle when you guys say, &quot;How could Steve think of this?&quot; Well, I'm not making stuff up. I'm always basing it off of some item. I'm just tweaking.<br /> <br /> B: He's not that creative!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I don't have to be that creative, yeah. What this ... the item basically is just physicists understanding a little bit better, the nature of superconductivity. And the hope is that one day, one magical day, they'll use this knowledge in order to be able to finally get the &quot;holy grail,&quot; and make room temperature superconductors. But, yeah, they have not created anything. They just were able to, make some further investigation to sort of further understanding, essentially the quantum glue that holds these Cooper pairs together. That was the breakthrough.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. But they did use indium; So, I pulled that out of there. Indium, by the way, indium is an element. It is atomic #49. It is a metal. It's a soft metal with a fairly low melting point. It's chemically similar to {{w|gallium}} and {{w|thallium}}. Indium. Pretty cool.<br /> <br /> E: It sounds like two dwarves from {{w|The Lord of the Rings|Lord of the Rings}}.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> B: Gallium! Thallium!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Right, okay, let's go on to #1. A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 to 40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040 is ... science. Doesn't mean this is going to come ...<br /> <br /> R: Hooray for water scarcity!<br /> <br /> S: So, the connection, as Rebecca said, is we need to use a lot of water to cool these power generators. Whether it's nuclear, or it's coal, or whatever. You can't let them overheat. A lot of power plants don't really track how much water they're using. So the authors are saying this is a problem. We need to more carefully track this.<br /> <br /> R: Really? Jeez.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, and what they mean by a water shortage is that you will essentially have to choose between power generation and drinking water, that we won't have enough to do both.<br /> <br /> E: Hrmm...<br /> <br /> S: By 2040 – which doesn't sound that far in the future when you think about it -<br /> <br /> E: A generation.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that the entire world will be experiencing this water shortage if we are meeting our electricity needs at that time with our current mix of power generation. So, what's the solution? Well, they make a number of recommendations. Improve energy efficiency; better research on alternative cooling cycles; researching on how much water power plants use; massive investments in wind and solar, because wind and solar don't use a lot of water; and abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water stressed places, which is, they say, half the planet, because that's what uses the most water to make electricity.<br /> <br /> So, yeah, pretty frightening extrapolation, but of course, it's one study, this is &lt;I&gt;their&lt;/I&gt; analysis. These are always difficult. There's a lot of moving parts, you know.<br /> <br /> E: That's why I thought it wasn't science, you know.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you know. I just said, it's a published analysis that indicates this. I thought you could believe it or not believe it. But any single analysis like this, like, &quot;We're reaching {{w|peak oil}}!&quot; Any of those, you always got to take them with a grain of salt because, you know, you leave out one factor, and it can change the whole outcome, you know? So, it's very tricky. And I'd like to see that there's a consensus, that multiple independant analyses are overlapping, coming to the same conclusion. So ... but it definitely is one more reason that even if their projections are overly grim, it's one more reason to get off fossil fuels, and to make, as Bob suggests, a massive investment in at least solar energy. So, there you have it. Good job, guys!<br /> <br /> J: Thank you!<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, except Evan.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you!<br /> <br /> == Announcements: &lt;small&gt;(1:20:33)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Jay, before we get to the quote, I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, I want to give a very sincere thank you to everyone who has donated to our legal defence fund. We are already, we've covered about 60% of the legal expenses that we have made so far. So, we have covered a huge chunk of our legal expenses with the donations.<br /> <br /> Obviously, we can't know ahead of time what the ultimate costs are gonna be. I have estimates from my lawyer, and it's a lot. You know, it's probably gonna be somewhere between 60 and 70,000 dollars if the thing goes the distance. So, we do have a ways to go before we got there. But, in just one week, there has been an incredible outpouring of support for the SGU, for our defence against this lawsuit, and of course, people donating to support our defence, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it.<br /> <br /> We also wanted to point out that the SGU, always looking to expand our activity, has a new webpage on our SGU homepage, the Science News page. So, if you go to [http://www.theskepticsguide.org theskepticsguide.org], and you click on the science news banner, you will see that we're putting up about two to three news items per day. We're going to be expanding it, but we're selecting items that are like, the coolest news items of the day. And Evan is doing some reviews of ... Evan has got, you've got two that you're doing. Why don't you describe them really quick for us, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, thanks, Steve. So, I am doing two reviews, like, you said. One is ... I call it the SGU Cutting Room Floor. So, these are some items that we would have loved to have gotten to on the last episode of the show, but just didn't have the time. There's always more items than we have time for. And then the other one is called the Top 5 Ridiculous Comments of the Week. So, I scour the internet, looking for people making all sorts of ridiculous comments on all sorts of different things, and I try to condense that down to the top 5 each week. So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yep, and we're adding some special segments. We have a Weird, Wildlife Wednesday segment that we're putting out. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/author/kate Kate Christian] is doing that for us. Kate's really been helpf7ul with all of our social media efforts. So, I'd like to thank her as well for helping us get this going. And send us, if you have any ideas for science news bits you'd like to see on the Science News page, let us know. We're always looking to expand the content that we're putting there.<br /> <br /> And, of course, all of this is interfacing with our Facebook page, which we have been extremely active on as well. So, if you haven't checked out our Facebook page recently, check it out. Check out our Science News page. Send us ideas for stuff you'd like to see there.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:23:14)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;“I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.”-Lawrence M. Krauss&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, give us the quote.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;I hope that every person at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.” (Shouting) {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}}!<br /> <br /> S: I like that! I like that. It's a very good quote. It is a good, sobering, humbling experience to have something you firmly believe be proven completely and utterly wrong.<br /> <br /> J: That was sent in by a listener named, Brendan Shwass, from New Zealand. Brendan, we're fully expecting to meet you in person when we will be in New Zealand, I think, what is that, the first week of December?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me this week, everyone.<br /> <br /> B: Sure, Steve.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> R: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you guys.<br /> <br /> R: What a better way to spend your birthday.<br /> <br /> J: I love you.<br /> <br /> E: Hey, happy birthda-a-ay!<br /> <br /> J: You're one of the best people I know, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you brotha. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> Before Greenwich got Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude, used by sailors.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Prime meridian (Greenwich)|Zero Longitude}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> All batteries need to have three things in order to work: An electrolite, an anode, and a cathode.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Battery (electricity)|Battery components}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The KT extinction boundary has been renamed the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary.<br /> <br /> Humanity is headed for a global water shortage&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Looming water shortage]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y<br /> |General Science = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> |SGU = y<br /> |Technology = y}}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_473&diff=9572 2015-01-17T20:58:05Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Interview With Bill Nye (41:37) */ Various minor corrections.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 473<br /> |episodeDate = August 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Fluffydinosaur1.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |rebecca = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = BN: {{w|Bill Nye}}<br /> |guest2 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no second guest --&gt;<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-02.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44275.0.html<br /> |qowText = I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey everybody<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys.<br /> <br /> S: And Evan Bernstein<br /> <br /> E: Steve, did you say it's July 29th?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct!<br /> <br /> E: As in July 29th, 1964?<br /> <br /> S: 1964?<br /> <br /> E: 50 years ago, to the day, er...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, well, this day in Skepticism, Steve Novella was born!<br /> <br /> (Rogues cheer)<br /> <br /> J: That's actually relevant too! That's really cool! Happy birthday, brother!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you so much.<br /> <br /> E: Happy birthday.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. I'm 50.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel?<br /> <br /> S: The big 5 – 0<br /> <br /> J: Holy crap.<br /> <br /> S: The Y-5-0<br /> <br /> B: Oh mother ....<br /> <br /> S: Four bits.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel? Do you feel different?<br /> <br /> S: Half a century.<br /> <br /> R: Have you bought a sports car?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, no, I'm way past my midlife crisis already.<br /> <br /> R: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: I decided to start a podcast for my midlife crisis.<br /> <br /> R: That's sad.<br /> <br /> E: Look what it's gotten you.<br /> B: You freak.<br /> <br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:11)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 2, 1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by Parliament.<br /> <br /> R: Well, you know what, you share a birthday with {{w|Greenwich Mean Time}}! Did you know that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Is that right?<br /> <br /> R: Yah!<br /> <br /> E: Awesome!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (British accent) Greenwich Mean Time, I say.<br /> <br /> R: Well, oh, wait. No, you don't, because this was August 2nd, the day this podcast comes out.<br /> <br /> B: Psyche!<br /> <br /> R: Sorry ...<br /> <br /> S: Close.<br /> <br /> E: In podcast land, you share, but not in real life.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Well, there goes my big segue. Anyway, in 1880, on August 2nd, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by the {{w|Parliament of the United Kingdom|UK Parliament}}. Which is, it's always weird to me when I think about time suddenly coming into existence. (Laughs) I mean, obviously, time has always existed, because it always requires time.<br /> <br /> E: Oh!<br /> <br /> R: (Laughs) But for a long time, each town would have it's own, particular time; and there was really no desperate need to make sure that they were all coordinated but once ...<br /> <br /> B: Train schedules!<br /> <br /> R: Train schedules were one thing, but the reason why Greenwich Mean Time was adopted when it was, was apparently more for naval navigation, and it was only standardized and used across Europe once train transportation increased. And then it wasn't until three years after it was officially adopted that the United States adopted it as well. And that was when telegraph lines first started transmitting (inaudible) &lt;!type?&gt; signals to all the cities.<br /> <br /> B: Ah-h-h...<br /> <br /> R: So, yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Cool.<br /> <br /> R: And it was adopted worldwide, November 1st, 1884.<br /> <br /> J: Cool! Very cool!<br /> <br /> R: And then there was time.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, before Greenwich was Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude. So, when sailors – as you said – sailors would set their clocks to Greenwich Time, because then they would estimate their longitude by how far they were from Greenwich, basically. Based upon, &quot;Oh, it's noon! And the sun is two hours past being directly overhead. So I must be two hours past zero longitude.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> J: (British accent) There you have it.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Mike Adams Follow Up &lt;small&gt;(3:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/07/28/fbi-turns-up-heat-on-mike-adams-as-health-ranger-fiasco-widens-plus-adams-archive/<br /> <br /> S: So, Jay, you're gonna give us a quick follow up on the whole {{w|NaturalNews|Mike Adams}} hubbub from last week.<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Ugh.<br /> <br /> S: Things are happening so fast we actually missed some important updates when we recorded the last show.<br /> <br /> J: Well, yeah, the quick summary is that Mike wrote a blog post where he compares people that support or are neutral about {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMOs}} to the {{w|Nazi Germany|Nazi regime}} and, in essence, put out a death threat against anybody that supports GMOs, saying that good people – who are anti-GMO – should kill people who are pro-GMO. And he riddled his blog post with pictures of {{w|Adolf Hitler|Hitler}}, and the Nazi party, and all the terrible things that they did, using that as ...<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Swastika#As_the_symbol_of_Nazism|Swastikas}}.<br /> <br /> J: yeah, swastikas, everything, using it as a way to convince his readers that they need to take action. Now, the big thing that he did, also, was that he requested that someone make a website that lists the offending parties, people that support GMO. And Steve, and {{w|David Gorski}}, and a ton of other journalists and news outlets were listed on this website. And then things got stranger.<br /> <br /> If that blog post wasn't strange and horrible enough, the update is that now the {{w|Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI}} is really turning up the heat on Mike, and they're investigating him. And some legitimate proof has come down the pike through web forensics that Mike is actually the person who created the listing website. Let me give you the details behind that.<br /> <br /> Now keep in mind, he supposedly requested during his blog, in the middle of his blog, for someone to create this website. Wouldn't it be convenient if somebody created this list of people that we can mark as our enemies, the big supporters of GMO, the big offenders. The &quot;people that should be killed,&quot; right? Then this website pops up very soon after, and Mike updates his blog saying, &quot;and here's a link to the website that some reader of my blog created.&quot;<br /> <br /> Turns out, Mike is that reader. It turns out that that website was created a short while before Mike actually posted his blog post calling for these people to be killed.<br /> <br /> B: Oh-h-h, nice.<br /> <br /> J: It also turns out that the formatting of the website – those two pages, specifically – Mike's page, and the listing page of the supporters of GMO have very similar formats and layout. And not just they're both using Wordpress, but similar in ways that someone looking at the code, and the &quot;forensics&quot; can determine that it's probably the same exact code base. I don't know how else to put this ... (shouting) Busted! Like, yeah, Mike, you got caught with your pants way down!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Jay, even more important, what did he say about that website before it was even proven that he was the author?<br /> <br /> J: What did he say? Well, what he did was ...<br /> <br /> B: How did he ...<br /> <br /> J: He did a series of updates on his blog. So, he's littering his blog with these updates. &quot;Update: I didn't actually, these are not my words. I didn't say to kill these people. I'm just quoting some nazi bad guy from 50 years ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: No, no, no, he was quoting the current {{w|President of Germany}}, who was talking about the {{w|Wolf's Lair|Wolf's Den}} assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler.<br /> <br /> R: Well, he said he was paraphrasing.<br /> <br /> S: ''Paraphrasing''. But then I also heard that the German president didn't actually say that.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he said, &quot;I was paraphrasing the German government.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's all irrelevant. He constructed a narrative. {{w|Monsanto}} is evil. They're like the nazis. People who are pro-GMO are paid Monsanto collaborators. They are like nazi collaborators. It was morally acceptable – in fact, an imperitive – to kill nazi collaborators. He laid it all out there. Then he makes the Monsantocollaborators website, claims somebody else did it. And then when the heat gets turned up, he has the audacity to claim, &quot;You know what? I'm beginning to think that this Monsantocollaborators website is a {{w|False flag|false flag}} operation. That Monsanto created it just to make me look like an idiot.&quot;<br /> <br /> And then it turns out, as Jay was pointing out, that &lt;I&gt;he&lt;/I&gt; made the website! So he's pretty much busted in a flat out lie. And there's no other way to really interpret it in my mind.<br /> <br /> J: He didn't have ...<br /> <br /> E: What'd he think?<br /> <br /> J: Well, Evan, what he thought was ...<br /> <br /> E: How could he not think he was not gonna get caught?<br /> <br /> J: In his stupor of hatred, he really thought that he was gonna incite people to take some type of action. Now, I can't say – I can only speculate – and this is, of course, all in my opinion. I honestly don't know if Mike actually wanted people like my brother, Steve, and for David Gorski to get killed. I don't know. But he really made it seem crystal clear that that was the message. That truly was the message.<br /> <br /> E: And, where's the mainstream media on all of this? You know, I'm seeing a lot of writings from people in skeptical circles, science circles, and so forth, but I've not seen it on {{w|ABC News|ABC}}. I have not seen it on {{w|CNN}}. I've not seen it in any of those places.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it would be interesting if it did get wider mainstream coverage, but, we'll see.<br /> <br /> E: He gets plenty of coverage in other ways, all in positive ways.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's true.<br /> <br /> E: On {{w|The Oprah Winfrey Show|Oprah}}, and {{w|The Dr. Oz Show|Dr. Oz}}, and all these ...<br /> <br /> S: The best thing is though, that the FBI is investigating. He crossed a line, where now the FBI is looking into this. So, if they could get access to information to not just strongly suggest, but to actually prove that Mike Adams was behind the Monsantocollaborators website, then he is &lt;I&gt;legally&lt;/I&gt; busted; then he is totally busted. And, I don't know! I don't know how much the law allows for the FBI ... what actions to take against him.<br /> <br /> Either he was deliberately inciting to murder, or this was reckless endangerment. Then, at the very least, his reputation should be in tatters. And that's the one thing that we could most help with, is to make sure everybody remembers ... he should never live this down in my opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Never, ever! Well, we're never gonna let people forget it.<br /> <br /> R: Indeed.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, let's move on. Enough time on this guy.<br /> <br /> === Battery Advance &lt;small&gt;(9:44)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/scientists-approach-holy-grail-of-battery-technology-but-is-it-more-of-a-holey-grail<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about (sarcastic excitement) an exciting new advance in battery technology! Finally! Because we've never had this before!<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yes, another one! (Evan laughs) So ...<br /> <br /> R: It's always 5 to 10 years away, so, has it been 5 to 10 years?<br /> <br /> E: Since we last spoke about this one!<br /> <br /> B: So, scientists have apparently come very close to what some have called the holy grail of battery technology, and that's the phrase that got me. When I see holy grail ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh!<br /> <br /> B: in anything related to science, I perk up. I'm like, &quot;Alright, what the hell is going on here?&quot; Especially battery technology. We need a damn holy grail. So, {{w|Lithium-ion battery|lithium-ion batteries}}, they're one of the premier – I'm sure everyone's heard of them – they're one of the premier, most popular batteries for portable, and rechargeable consumer electronics. They've got many, many very good qualities, excellent energy density. They only slowly lose charge when they're not being used. There's no {{w|memory effect}}, which is kind of an often-abused term.<br /> <br /> Memory effect was used specifically to apply to {{w|Nickel-cadmium battery|nickel cadmium}}, and {{w|Nickel-metal hydride battery|nickel-metal hyride batteries}}. And it had to do with the fact that if you charge one of those batteries before it was fully discharged, then it would slowly decrease the amount of battery life that you would have.<br /> <br /> E: Oh-h! Yeah, you remember that? What a pain! Having to cycle your batteries, and stuff? What a pain.<br /> <br /> B: Right. So, lithium-ion does not suffer from that at all, although they do suffer, of course, from just general age-related issues that are just so annoying, so much so that it's one of the most common complaints about smart phones. So, battery life is still an issue, and not just for smartphones, obviously. There's so many things, cars especially.<br /> <br /> So, for a long time now, scientists have been trying to create a lithium-ion battery that has more lithium, actually in it. So, before I go on, I just got to cover real fast the basic battery components. All batteries need to have three of these things here, these three things.<br /> <br /> An {{w|electrolyte}}, which is basically just a source of electrons. An {{w|anode}}, which dispenses the electrons. And a {{w|cathode}}, which receives them. You need those three. You don't have those three, you pretty much don't have a battery.<br /> <br /> So, lithium-ion batteries have {{w|lithium}} in the electrolyte, which is good, but the anode is only partially lithium. It's not fully lithium. And an all-lithium anode would in fact be a huge improvement because it would allow for things like, it would be much lighter, it would be more energy-dense, and those are two of, I would say, the top three or four most desired qualities of these types of batteries.<br /> <br /> They've had problems though, with these fully lithiumized anodes – I don't think that's a word. Anodes made of lithium expand much more than any other material, and it causes cracks to form in the anode, releasing ions. And these ions create stringy {{w|Dendrite (metal)|dendrites}}, they call 'em, that shorten the battery life. There's chemical reactions between the electrolyte and the anode, and that depletes some of the electrolyte. It shortens the battery life. And, I'm sure you've all heard, of course, of the fire hazards that can happen because of this, because it gets so hot.<br /> <br /> So dealing with these exact issues is precisely what the researchers from {{w|Stanford University}} reporting in – what was it – the {{w|Nature Nanotechnology|Journal of Nature and Nanotechnology}}. Now, they're not quite there yet – how predictable is that – but they do seem to be extremely close. Close enough, I think, that I think it's not premature at all to publish about it, because it is an interesting advance.<br /> <br /> So what they did was create a coating for the anode that's made of these super-tiny carbon nanospheres. So, the nanospheres protect the anode, and prevent all these drawbacks that I've just mentioned. The ratio of lithium, the anode pushes out to the amount put in during a charge cycle is at 99%. So, you get that? That's called the [http://depts.washington.edu/matseed/batteries/MSE/definitions.html Coulombic efficiency]. But it needs to be 99.9% before it's really commercially viable.<br /> <br /> But this is really such a little difference that I think they should be able to make minor improvements, tweak it, and they'll be able to bring it up to snuff with hopefully not a huge amount of effort 'cause clearly, this fundamental concept is far superior to any of the previous attempts that have been made with a fully lithium anode, so that's really cool.<br /> <br /> Clearly, I think this is a really fantastic advance with much promise, but I do have a few problems. First of all, it's battery technology! We hear about advances, like Steve said, all the time! And then bam – nothing! I read article after article that sounds like a fantastic idea. &quot;Wow! This is really gonna change things!&quot; And then, that's like, literally, the last thing I hear about it. And that's generally because there's like, these key battery factors, and one of them or more will invariably fail. Whether it's the scalability, the cost, the recharging cycles; there's always something – a key thing – that is missing that prevents a lot of these things from just really taking off.<br /> <br /> Related to that is the fact that they're not quite at their goal yet, right? They're close, but often, going that last yard, or 9/10ths of a percent in this case, that's often the big problem, right? The last little bit is like, &quot;Damn, we can't quite get it.&quot; And who knows what kind of problems they could encounter that would prevent them from going even that little bit extra. I don't know enough about battery technology to really say what the stumbling blocks could be, although they are confident. But, big deal, everybody's confident.<br /> <br /> And then, finally, like I mentioned earlier, and most annoying to me, was that they described this as a holy grail of battery technology. But, I read a lot of news items on this, and a lot of these reports were saying that the technology could extend the battery life 2 to 3 times!<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's nice.<br /> <br /> B: That's really nice!<br /> <br /> S: It's incremental though.<br /> <br /> B: Holy grail? The holy grail is not incremental. That's a great way to say it. And they even said that affordable electric cars with a 300 mile range. Wait, whoa! $25,000 electric car, 300 mile range? Aren't we close to 300 miles now? If it could go 6, 7, 800, now you're talking!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think you're right, Bob. This is a potential incremental advance in lithium-ion battery technology – hardly worth the hype that they're giving it. And you're also right ... I mean, I literally see a news item about like this every week. I mean, &lt;I&gt;weekly&lt;/I&gt; there is some new press release about some new potential way of eeking more out of a lithium-ion battery. Some sound greater than this in potential.<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, that's right! Some of them, there's even more problems ...<br /> <br /> S: About a year or two ago, I read about using nano-structuring the lithium, and getting ten times the capacity out of it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: But then there's this little problem with how much can be discharged. So, the {{w|discharger}} is a little on the slow end to be actually useful for anything, but ... or, whatever. As you say, it's always something like that, because there's so many potential fatal deal killers with battery technology, that you have to have all your ducks in a row, or it's just a nice lab experiment.<br /> <br /> The other category, that it's like, literally every week, there's an amazing breakthrough, is the solar cell technology. Same thing.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes, yes, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: And they're just talking about some incremental advance in one aspect of the many possible things. And, you know, the thing about solar technology is that it &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; incrementally advancing. Each, every year, we're a little bit better. Okay, but the hype that comes with it now is just incredible.<br /> <br /> B: Right, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again: These types of technologies, batteries and solar {{w|photovoltaics}}, or just solar energy in general, these are the types of things that, god, if I had a trillion dollars laying around, this is the stuff that needs a {{w|Manhattan Project}}. Billions ... because these are the things that will impact and help the entire world just in one fell swoop!<br /> <br /> E: I don't know. Are they gonna come eventually? The whole time for 9+ years we've been talking about this is, it's always been small, incremental stage. Isn't it just the nature of this particular science that this is how it's gonna be, and ...<br /> <br /> S: It's the nature of many sciences. But Evan brings up a good point too, Bob. We may never have that one advance that gives us the 10 time improvement, the order of magnitude. It may be we just need the 2 to 3 times advance that's actually really good when you think about it. And you stack a few of those together, and then you're there. You know?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's fine. But, hey, we can speed up those incremental advances, can't we?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right?<br /> <br /> === Ray Comfort's Gravity Gaffe &lt;small&gt;(18:13)&lt;/small&gt; === <br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ray-comforts-gravity-gaffe<br /> <br /> <br /> S: But, Evan, do you think {{w|Ray Comfort}} can wrap his head around advances in battery and solar technology?<br /> <br /> B: Nice.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, are you kidding? He is Mr. Science. Move over, {{w|Bill Nye}}; get out of the way {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}}; Ray Comfort is here! Evangelical Minister, author, video producer, perhaps best known for the so-called [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Banana_fallacy banana falacy], in which he claimed that the perfection of the design of the banana is an example of God's hand in creation. Yes.<br /> <br /> B: Too bad &lt;I&gt;we&lt;/I&gt; designed the {{w|Cavendish banana subgroup|Cavendish banana}}.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Irrelevant! Not in the Bible.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: So, on July 26th, he threw this pearl of wisdom before his swine - (Bob laughs) - his Facebook readers. &quot;If the Bible isn't God-inspired, explain why ... how the writer of the {{w|Book of Job}} knew 3000 years ago that, 'The Earth hangs upon nothing.'&quot; And that's Job, chapter 26, verse 7? Is that how that works?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: And then he writes, &quot;It wasn't until thousands of years later that science discovered that gravity doesn't exist in space, and that this massive Earth does indeed hang upon nothing.&quot; He later went back and revised that a bit to read, that gravity doesn't exist in space as it does on Earth, and that this massive Earth does, indeed, hang upon nothing. So, essentially he kind of said the same thing.<br /> <br /> You know what this reminded me? So, remember those old commercials from the 70's for {{w|E. F. Hutton &amp; Co.|E.F. Hutton}}? Right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen. So, I'm gonna borrow that, and say, &quot;When Ray Comfort talks about science, skeptics listen, and then correct him!&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Not before laughing.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly. You have to laugh at first about this stuff, and then you can get serious. I laughed when I read one Twitterer who put this out there. He said, &quot;First of all, the Earth doesn't hang, for a start. It's not the bloody family portrait.&quot; (Laughs) Which, I love that picture about, that's exactly ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's a Christmas ornament!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Exactly, right?<br /> <br /> B: It's! In! Orbit!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Yeah, and you can't help yourself. Anywhere you start with this, you're gonna wind up correcting him, so there's really nowhere to go wrong here. So, {{w|Gravitation|gravity}} is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It's one of the four {{w|Fundamental interaction|fundamental forces}} of nature along with {{w|electromagnetism}}, and the nuclear {{w|Strong interaction|strong force}}, and the {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}! And the phenomenon of gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of {{w|spacetime}}.<br /> <br /> But Comfort was under the impression that there's no gravity in space, hence the reason why astronauts appear to float around as they do. But there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; gravity throughout the universe, right? The entire {{w|Observable universe|visible universe}} has revealed the wonders of gravity in all of space and time, and there's just boatloads of evidence to support it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, the entire structure of the known universe is basically authored by gravity. It's the most far-reaching force there is! It's like, hello!<br /> <br /> E: So, obviously, a lot of people chimed in on this, both supporters of his, and people who actually understand science, in making legitimate attempts to correct him. You know, amongst the giggles and things.<br /> <br /> So, he went ahead and corrected himself, a few hours later. Basically, here's what he said, &quot;Up until today, I was one of the ''many'' who believe there's zero gravity in space. We live and learn. Thanks to the many {{w|atheism|atheists}} who kindly corrected me.&quot; But then, he actually goes on by also saying, &quot;{{w|Isaac Newton|Sir Isaac Newton}} is the one -&quot; I'm cutting this short because it's kind of a long post. But he writes, &quot;Sir Isaac Newton is the one who so wisely noted atheism is so senseless. I will therefore try to make it a little clearer for those folks who pretend that God doesn't exist. While there is invisible gravity in space -so much for seeing is believing – this massive Earth hangs on nothing. It has no visible means of support, similar to the no means of support backing {{w|Darwinism|Darwinian evolution}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: He was wrong, but he's still right! Even though he was completely wrong. It's just unbelievable. It's astounding. He is absolutely {{w|Scientific literacy|scientifically illiterate}}. I think we could state that without fearing contradiction.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Very kind.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, he thought there was no gravity in space. You have to have absolutely no effing idea what's going on if you think that. You don't understand the first thing about physics and astronomy, right? And it's fine if somebody's not interested in science, and just doesn't have any idea about things like that, the {{w|Sherri Shepherd|Sherri Shepherds}} of the world, but he takes it a step further. In his abject ignorance of science, he uses that as a basis in order to critize ...<br /> <br /> J: To speculate! He's speculating without any ...<br /> <br /> S: No, not speculating, Jay! He's saying definitively, &quot;Hey! If the Bible isn't inspired by God, explain &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; atheists!&quot; But he's talking totally about his own complete, abject, scientific illiteracy.<br /> <br /> J: And clearly, he's unmoved, when he finds out what the truth is, like we said. No effect! Sorry! Doesn't care. That's the infuriating part of it. Okay, so, he starts off wrong. Okay, he's wrong. Then a lot of people showed him, &quot;This is what the truth is,&quot; and then he finally swallowed that, and then ... doesn't care! Didn't affect him in any way!<br /> <br /> S: Because he's not basing his beliefs on facts or logic or evidence or anything. He's {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} facts that appear to support his position. And when that's wrong, that doesn't matter! He'll just cherry pick &lt;I&gt;other&lt;/I&gt; facts. Like, he went on, &quot;Oh yeah! But gravity's invisible! So much for seeing is believing!&quot; What! It's a total {{w|Non sequitur (logic)|non sequitur}}. Even just, his interpretation of the Job passage, &quot;The Earth hangs upon nothing.&quot; That's meaningless.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> S: It doesn't even have any scientific meaning. It was written by somebody who didn't know the first thing about cosmology or physics, or astronomy.<br /> <br /> E: I liken him taking the Job quote so far out of context, this is the same way the things {{w|Nostradamus}} &quot;predicted&quot; way back when, and applying that to modern times is, there's no connection whatsoever! They have no idea basically ...<br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Feathers &lt;small&gt;(24:17)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/most-dinosaurs-may-have-had-feathers<br /> <br /> S: To finish up the news items, just two quick topics on dinosaurs. I love talking about dinosaurs. The first one has to do with how many dinosaurs probably had feathers. This has been a very fascinating story from our childhood. Rebecca, I think even you, when you were a kid, right, dinosaurs had tough, leathery skin, right? You never saw dinosaurs with feathers.<br /> <br /> But, of course, since really, {{w|Archaeopteryx}}, over a hundred years ago, the idea was that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Archeopteryx looks pretty much half dinosaur, half bird. Since then, especially since the 1980's, we've discovered a lot of feathered dinosaurs, so it wasn't just this one feathered half dinosaur, there was an entire clade, a group, of dinosaurs like {{w|Velociraptor|Velociraptors}}, et cetera, that had feathers of some type, as well as different flying dinosaurs, and other ones that had feathers but couldn't fly, and primitive birds; it's really been fleshed out tremendously.<br /> <br /> But the question remains, is how far back in the dinosaur evolutionary history do feathers go? Feathered dinosaurs are mainly found among the {{w|Theropoda|Theropods}}, which are in the branch of dinosaurs called the {{w|Saurischia|saurischians}} – which, ironically means lizard-hipped – whereas the other branch of dinosaurs, the ones that did not give rise to the birds, are the {{w|Ornithischia|ornithischians}}, which means bird-hip.<br /> <br /> B: Ha!<br /> <br /> S: But, in any case...<br /> <br /> B: How ironic is that?<br /> <br /> S: The theropods are the feathered dinosaurs. So, pretty much, at this point, we can say most theropod dinosaurs probably had feathers at some point in their life, even if it was just {{w|Down feather|downy feathers}} as young, and they may not have survived until adulthood.<br /> <br /> But recently, scientists have discovered what look like primitive feather impressions on the fossil of a neo-ornithischian dinosaur. In other words, from the other main group of dinosaurs. The common anscestor of the ornithischians and the saurichians is basically the common anscestor of all dinosaurs. Now, do you understand the implication of that?<br /> <br /> J: No!<br /> <br /> E: We have to rename dinosaurs.<br /> <br /> S: It means that all dinosaurs may have had feathers, every single dinosaur ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: It may actually go all the way back to the early days of the dinosaurs ...<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a clade.<br /> <br /> B: That's amazing. Did anybody ever even come close to even predicting this?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's incredible.<br /> <br /> B: That's fantastic.<br /> <br /> S: So, this is one fossil, I have to always say. We hate to .. you don't want to hang your hat on one piece of evidence. So, it would be nice if we could find other fossils. It's possible that these feathery filaments were only exist in a juvenile, and not adults. So, it may be that all dinosaurs had down as chicks, as baby dinosaurs, but not as adults. But still, the idea that a feather-like {{w|Integument|integumentary}} adaptation is common to most or all dinosaurs is amazing. So, if this holds up, if this turns out to be the case, that would be fascinating.<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, weren't some of the feathers ... were unique. I mean, these are feathers they had never seen before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Completely, very different structure, whatever. And also, the article, the research I read made a good comparison. They said all dinosaurs had some type of feather, just like all mammals have some type of hair, which is a nice comparison. But, they also made an interesting point. I mean, you look at an elephant - and an elephant's a mammal - not much hair going on on an elephant. There is some.<br /> <br /> So they think for the largest predators, they probably had very, very sparse feathers, if any, really, at all. Which makes sense, because they don't really need them for ...<br /> <br /> S: Temperature control.<br /> <br /> B: ... temperature control. So, I wouldn't run around thinking that, oh, {{w|Tyrannosaurus|T-Rexes}} were running around with feathers everywhere, type of thing. But who knows?<br /> <br /> S: But, it does mean that there is this potential for feather-like structures in dinosaurs as an entire clade ...<br /> <br /> B: Right.<br /> <br /> S: And think about that. So, this is getting back to the whole evidence for evolution thing. If evolution were not true, what are the odds that the group that are anatomically birds probably derived from, also had the potential ... the widespread potential to grow feather-like structures? This is exactly the kind of thing you would predict from evolution. And there's absolutely no reason for it without evolution as a unifying theory.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah. <br /> <br /> B: Steve, I know that these dinosaurs, what they found, these fossils are very special because I think they died in a lake bed, and they were very quickly covered up with a light volcanic silt, or whatever. So, that's why the resolution is so fine. But still, I can't help but thinking, &quot;You know, how many fossils have we dug up, and there was no hint of any type of feather structures on any of the big boys that all these thousands ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, for feather impressions, you need the right kind of conditions as you were saying, Bob. So this is, it may be a rare window. So, we just have to hope ... and also, this dinosaur was found outside of China, so it's the first feathered dinosaur found outside of China, which is also important. So, if we find more in various groups, and in various locations around the world. The more we find, the more evidence there is that really, all dinosaurs had some kind of potential for feathers. Or, you know, when we say, &quot;feathers,&quot; these could all just be monofilaments. They're not necessarily the fully-formed shafted feather that we ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> J: So you consider it an early feather, then, right?<br /> <br /> S: Like a downy feather, oh yeah. Or, it's also probably not on, saying, &quot;early&quot; implies that it later evolved into a bird-like feather, but it probably didn't. You know what I mean? This is in a completely separate branch. These monofilaments probably never became anything that you would think of as a feather. But it's clearly a feather-like appendage, or structure. <br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Extinction &lt;small&gt;(30:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dinosaur-extinction-revisited/<br /> <br /> S: The other dinosaur news item, this is another topic about, which I have been fascinated ever since I was a child. And that is, what wiped out the dinosaurs? Now, everybody knows the answer to this, right? What killed off the dinosaurs?<br /> <br /> R: Inability to brush their teeth, 'cause of their tiny, tiny arms.<br /> <br /> S: (Suppresses laughter) Right, exactly. The {{w|Chicxulub crater}} asteroid from 66 million years ago<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's what we said.<br /> <br /> S: at the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary. So, there's no question that 66 million years ago, a huge meteor – or a {{w|bolide}}, as they call it – whacked into the Earth at Chicxulub ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wait, Steve. Sorry, Steve. Now, bolide, isn't that a more generic term that can account for {{w|Asteroid|asteroids}} &lt;I&gt;and&lt;/I&gt; {{w|Comet|comets}}?<br /> <br /> S: Yes, because they don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, alright.<br /> <br /> S: They don't know, it was a bolide. They don't really know it was a meteor.<br /> <br /> E: And you didn't call it the K-T boundary, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: It's no longer the K-T boundary. Now it's the K-Pg extinction for {{w|Paleogene}}.<br /> <br /> J: And why didn't they send me an email when they changed that?<br /> <br /> S: I know, right? I didn't get the memo either; I just had to read it. So, anyway, it's actually more of a controversy than I was aware of until maybe a couple of years ago. I started to realize this is actually a little more controversial, that the meteor impact 66 million years ago was pretty much the main cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Paleontology|paleontologists}} are still debating among themselves whether or not dinosaurs as a group were already on the way out. One question is did the dinosaurs survive past the K-Pg boundary. I think that has been pretty much put to bed, and the answer is no. That no dinosaur survived past the K-Pg boundary. So, clearly, that is the punctuation mark at the end of dinosaurs' time on Earth. But the question is, were they already in decline, and on their way out, and was the asteroid or the bolide just the {{w|Coup de grâce|coup de grâce}}, that it was the final blow that wiped them out.<br /> <br /> B: That's the essense of the controversy right there.<br /> <br /> S: That's the controversy, that's it. Was it solely responsible, or was it just one among many factors. The other factors that paleontologists discuss are, 1, there were fluctuating sea levels at that time; 2, there was a fluctuating climate at that time in terms of the temperature of the Earth; and 3, and probably the biggest one, is the volcanism and the {{w|Deccan Traps}} located in India. They were massively volcanically active; poisoning the atmosphere, changing the climate; and that could put a lot of stress on dinosaurs and other large animals at the time.<br /> <br /> So, remember at the K-Pg extinction, all large {{w|Vertebrate}} groups, dinosaurs, {{w|Pleisiosauria|Pleisiosaurs}}, {{w|Mosasaur|mosasaurs}}, and {{w|Pterosaur|Pterosaurs}} went extinct, as did many species of {{w|Plankton}}, tropical invertebrates, and reef dwellers. So, it was a widespread extinction. {{w|Mammal|Mammals}}, birds, and insects actually did quite well. They did fine.<br /> <br /> It definitely wasn't something that was unique to dinosaurs. The reason we're talking about this now is a recent review of all existing evidence, trying to address this specific question of were the dinosaurs in decline prior to the meteor impact. And the answer to that is mostly no. A careful review of the evidence shows that there essentially is no significant scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the dinosaurs were in decline at the time the meteor hit. And, therefore, the meteor probably the primary, if not the sole cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> B: That's good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah,<br /> <br /> B: I like it.<br /> <br /> S: What you thought all along turns out to be true, and you can now comfortably ignore this controversy you didn't know about. But, the authors do hold out one tiny little exception.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god, what now?<br /> <br /> J: Oh boy!<br /> <br /> S: There was a slight decline in the species richness of North American ornithischians, but not therapods. So, there was a regional decline in one type of dinosaurs, mainly plant-eaters, the ornithischians. And they said, &quot;Maybe that made dinosaurs more vulnerable to extinction – to the collapse of their ecosystem.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, what's interesting is that that one tiny, little speculation is what the media ran with. And the headlines – even on sites that are normally very good, like {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature News}}, and the {{w|BBC}} – are reporting it as, &quot;The dinosaurs died because of bad luck.&quot; One even said that if the meteor had hit several million years earlier or later, the dinosaurs would have survived. That is &lt;I&gt;not&lt;/I&gt; what the paper concludes.<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: The paper concludes there was basically no decline in dinosaurs, and the meteor wiped them out. And then there was this one little, &quot;Yeah, okay, but the ornithischians were a little bit in decline in North America only, and maybe that made them more vulnerable. We see this pattern all the time, this ... half of what caught my interest with this story because I read the headline, I'm like, &quot;Wow! Really? That's pretty unusual.&quot; And then I read the paper, it's like, the paper's not saying this!<br /> <br /> The main evidence is not what the headlines go for. They pick out some little, tiny, little post script, but that's the thing that has the sexy headline. The dinosaurs died from bad luck! <br /> <br /> B: Holy crap!<br /> <br /> E: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> B: That's pathetic. Fail!<br /> <br /> S: Total fail. Total fail reporting this story. Just the way it gets translated is just unbelievable. And you know, it also shows, you gotta go ... if I just read the press releases, that's the impression I would have walked away with. But you got to go to the original source. You read the paper, and it's like ... I read the whole paper. Because the paper actually is fascinating.<br /> <br /> Anyone who's interested in this topic, the controversy over the extinction of the dinosaurs, this paper is an awesome primer. It goes over everything really well. And then in the discussion, it's very clear, that other than this one tiny exception, the evidence does not support any kind of general decline in dinosaurs as a group prior to the impact of the meteor.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(36:51)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> * Answer to last week: Dot Matrix Printer<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, Who's that Noisy?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, last week's Who's the Noisy, you remember this little tune? Remember this little turn? Remember this? Yeah.<br /> <br /> (Scratchy sound playing {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> S: Heh, that's awesome.<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Evan, can I ask you a question?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, sir.<br /> <br /> J: When we recorded the show last week, did I guess correctly?<br /> <br /> E: Jay, you did guess correctly. You were the first one!<br /> <br /> B: Jay, it seems so obvious now. (Laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Jay, tell us what that was!<br /> <br /> J: Tell us what you've won! That is the old {{w|Dot matrix printing|dot matrix printers}}.<br /> <br /> E: Remember those, dot matrix!<br /> <br /> J: Yes, so the drum beat is the actual feed of the paper. And then the notes, somebody figured out, I guess, a way to print different things with it, you can get different frequencies out of it.<br /> <br /> S: You could watch the whole thing on [http://youtu.be/u8I6qt_Z0Cg YouTube]<br /> <br /> J: Oh, okay. I didn't do that. I didn't cheat.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I mean, after Evan confirmed that, yes, it was a dot-matrix printer, I watched the whole thing on YouTube, and you could see what it's printing. You know, it's just dots. It's not text or anything.<br /> <br /> J: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: A dot-matrix printer?<br /> <br /> S: It does the whole song really well. It's very funny to watch.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> E: It is, and of course, you know, these things are not purposed to create music or stuff. But, hey, give people toys or technology, and they'll do all sorts of things with it that it wasn't supposed to do, though!<br /> <br /> S: They have far too much time on their hands.<br /> <br /> E: I suppose, so ...<br /> <br /> B: I love people like that! I love 'em!<br /> <br /> E: And it generated a ton of email, people having enjoyed that, realizing exactly what it was, expressing their own little comments about it, it was really cool to read. I spent a lot of time this week, 'cause there were hundreds of correct answers. But there can only be one winner each week. Rob McDermit, your name was chosen. Congratulations, you are this week's winner.<br /> <br /> And I want to send out a thank you to Liam Bond, who's also a listener, who actually sent me the link for this particular noisy, from last week. So, thank you, Liam. I appreciate that.<br /> <br /> S: Awesome. And what do you got for this week?<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this week, here's a voice you may recognize. You might not, but it's interesting nonetheless. Here we go.<br /> <br /> ?: (Male voice) I went nuts! I just didn't know what happened. I just lost it, and I just became a poor actor in New York. Like being a star student at {{w|Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT}}. I don't know. You tell me. I just ... crazy, I suppose. Swedish ... I don't know how to explain it.<br /> <br /> E: And, go ahead and submit your answer. Correct or not, we don't care. We want to hear from you. wtn@theskepticsguide.org is our email address. Or you can go ahead and post it on our forums, [http://sguforums.com sguforums.com]. Look for the sub thread called Who's that Noisy for episode 473. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, Evan.<br /> <br /> == Interview With Bill Nye &lt;small&gt;(41:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * http://billnye.com/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we recorded a really fun interview with Bill Nye the Science Guy while we were at {{w|The Amaz!ng Meeting|TAM}}. So, we're gonna play some of that interview for you now!<br /> <br /> (Music plays)<br /> <br /> S: We're here at TAM 2014, and it's our distinct pleasure to have with us back again, Bill Nye, the Science Guy! Bill, welcome back to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> BN: It's so good to be back.<br /> <br /> S: So, Bill, I asked you before we started if you wouldn't mind if we asked you about the {{w|Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate|Ham debate}}. I'm sure everyone's asking you about that. So, tell us how you feel. How did that go? Would you do it again? What do you think?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, it went great, for me, or us. I don't think I'd do it again because I don't know how much more ground there is to cover. However, I remind us that the audience is not Ken Ham, or Ken Ham's congregation, or ministry, as he calls it. The audience is everybody on the web. So, 3 and a half million views. And that's seriously, that's just in the first – what's it been – four months. It'll, I presume, just keep getting bigger and bigger.<br /> <br /> Everywhere I go, people watched it! I'm getting my shoes shined today in the {{w|McCarran International Airport|McCarran Airport}}. This guy, through a half dozen people. &quot;Loved the debate, man! Way to go!&quot; People I've not dealt with yet are, &quot;I hate you! You suck!&quot; And they're coming. But I haven't met many of them yet.<br /> <br /> S: I think that – we all watched the debate, of course – I mean, we ...<br /> <br /> J: It was so cool!<br /> <br /> S: It was cool!<br /> <br /> BN: It's so nice of you guys!<br /> <br /> B: It was an event! Come on!<br /> <br /> S: I love debates. I mean, personally. A lot of people in our movement are really shy about debates, but I think they're great. So, you did a fabulous job. I think, what you did really well, to be honest with you, was you just stuck to science communicating, and you just told the science end of the spectrum really well. And I think that might have, in the end ... I think some people were worried you weren't addressing Ham's points, but he doesn't really have any points.<br /> <br /> BN: I was gonna say, what is it beyond that he's got a book?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you're better off just saying, this is the science, and isn't it cool, and let's all really be enthusiastic about science. And maybe that was actually the best approach to go.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I thought the most important thing, as I will say today many times, you may be right, if I'm not right. The most important thing is to keep your cool. Keep my cool. Because these guys say such extraordinary things. It's just ...<br /> <br /> S: Easy to lose your head.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: Bill, how did you prepare for the debate?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, that's a great question. And thank you for asking.<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> BN: So, first of all, I was overconfident. Then I got to thinking about it, and I was terrified.<br /> <br /> (Loud laughter)<br /> <br /> B: It's probably healthy.<br /> <br /> BN: Then, I went to see {{w|Eugenie Scott}}, and you guys know [http://ncse.com/users/josh Josh Rosenau]? He's the second in command there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, okay, alright.<br /> <br /> BN: He's the head of resear- he's very good. And they really coached me, along with several other people from {{w|National Center for Science Education}}.<br /> <br /> S: 'Genie's a sci, by the way. She's here.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, and I want to see her talk! Or hear her ... Wait, I'll do both. (Rogues laugh) So she really coached me. And then, do you guys know {{w|Donald Prothero|Don Prothero}}?<br /> <br /> E: Oh, absolutely, yes. Good man.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I made good. I told him I'd buy him dinner; and I bought him dinner night before last. He really helped out. And {{w|Michael Shermer}}. We met for lunch at Michael's house, and those people really coached me. And then I did some research. I mean I spent a little time. And one thing has led to another, and I'm writing a book. I mean, I've written a book. 89,000 words. And it comes out the first week of November.<br /> <br /> J: This is about the whole experience.<br /> <br /> BN: It's about, nah, it's just called, &quot;Evolution: The Science of Creation.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ooh! That's a great title!<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, I'll show ya.<br /> <br /> E: Nice turn.<br /> <br /> BN: In my slide show – it's all about me-e-e. (Rogues laugh) I have the cover, which I got yesterday, Thursday. I got, they sent the latest version of the cover. It's a JPEG.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: So, this is really exciting, but I mention this for me, for us, we have this whole thing. We're always preaching to the choir. But don't you feel like it's growing?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, no question.<br /> <br /> S: I don't like the term &quot;preaching to the choir.&quot; We're educating people who are interested in science and critical thinking.<br /> <br /> BN: And the other thing is, this thing that we all humans are so kooky for, it's a community. That's what TAM's all about, right? Like, you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking? Wow! What a relief, right? As I say, this wouldn't matter except for kids. By kids, I mean students, science students. And that's why it's really important to me. We cannot raise a generation of students who are scientifcally illiterate, and without critical thinking skill, and so I feel that that debate really has done that. Now, a lot of people thought I shouldn't do it.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a lot of skeptics said it.<br /> <br /> E: Because there's reasons why. We've seen historical instances in which the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish#Debates Gish Gallop] has been employed by some of these people, and they run roughshod over ...<br /> <br /> BN: Let me just ask you guys, because it is all about (whispers) ''me.''<br /> <br /> B: We don't deny that! We agree with you with that.<br /> <br /> BN: What did I not screw up? I mean, I did it the way I was gonna do it.<br /> <br /> S: My take was what I said already. It was one strategy to just ignore him, and just to make the case for science and evolution. That's actually a good strategy, because once you're on the defensive, you lose because he can create misconceptions in seconds that would take you dozens of minutes to correct. So just forget him.<br /> <br /> So that's one approach. It's kind of like the non-debate debate. The art of fighting without fighting.<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: So ... I also totally agree, because I get this question a lot. I'm just in the middle of a debate with a {{w|9/11 Truth movement|9/11 Truther}}. People would be like, &quot;Why are you doing this?&quot; It's like, he's not the audience! I don't care about him. I am talking to people who want information, who are on the fence who will be compelled by this. And I'm gonna teach them some critical thinking and facts!<br /> <br /> BN: Or just the doubt's introduced to their minds. That's the big thing.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, the one thing our listeners will be very upset about if we don't bring this up, though. The one criticism that does come up is, &quot;But Ham exploited this to raise money for his ...&quot;<br /> <br /> BN: Here's my claim.<br /> <br /> S: You tell me.<br /> <br /> BN: It's not over yet.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> BN: So, he held an online press conference. I don't know if you guys watched that.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't.<br /> <br /> BN: And there's no members of the press at a press conference in {{w|Answers in Genesis}}, it's all their own guys.<br /> <br /> B: Is that afterwards, or before?<br /> <br /> BN: Afterwards, weeks later. So, two things. I got a letter saying that the debate did not influence it at all from a Mark Looy, who's second in command at Answers in ... maybe he's actually the head of Answers in Genesis. And saying it had no influence at all. And then they had this press conference saying it was the wind that blew ... but journalists in {{w|Kentucky}} are looking hard into this. They're trying to follow the money. And I have heard two people who've looked at the {{w|Irs_tax_forms#Fiduciary_reporting|990's}}, you know what I mean?<br /> <br /> Now, this is hearsay, you guys, this is the worst form of evidence. But he may – and this is may, not verified yet, they are trying to find out – but he may have leveraged the loan for the Arc Park against the {{w|Creation Museum}}, and you know, his attendance is going down.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: Because it's generally believed that his attendance is going down because he doesn't have new exhibits. This is in museum talk. So, what I did, you guys, I didn't give money to (inaudible), but I took the money from the debate, and I gave it to a planetary society.<br /> <br /> E: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: And I also gave it to the Kentucky Museum of Science, or maybe it's called {{w|Kentucky Science Center|Kentucky Children's Museum}}, and the {{w|Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal|Cincinnati Museum of Science}}. You know, trying to bracket him. So, it's not ... in other words, I will say, in the short term, you may be right. But in the medium term, I think he's gonna have a lot of trouble.<br /> <br /> E: The final reckoning is not in yet.<br /> <br /> BN: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's only June of the first few months, people!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> S: That's long though, attention span, for the public.<br /> <br /> BN: What'd you say? I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Gotcha for a second.<br /> <br /> BN: Hilarious!<br /> <br /> J: My only critique, is that you could have structured the debate to handle one or two topics, and had a moderator keep people on topic, which ... but I totally agree with Steve. After watching the debate, we were ... definitely more than once, you did such a good job, of just being ...<br /> <br /> E: Love you man!<br /> <br /> J: Well, you insulated yourself! You were immune to him just going off on these insane tangents <br /> <br /> BN: He was galloping gishy wash.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: He was trying, he tried. But overall, I just had a conversation with people an hour ago about this. What was the net result? I'm not sure. I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: It's hard to measure, but ...<br /> <br /> J: It is hard to measure.<br /> <br /> S: I certainly think I encountered a lot of people who like, excited about science because I saw you on that debate.<br /> <br /> BN: That's so nice!<br /> <br /> S: That's a win!<br /> <br /> BN: I've met several science teachers, and of course, this is a self-selecting group, who use it in class. They say they've played it in class, this spring.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> BN: Wow, yeah. That was not the plan. Cool.<br /> <br /> B: Have you guys seen ... they had pictures of people holding up these goofy questions. I think they were people that were actually at the event, and they wrote questions, trying to explain, &quot;Hey, Bill! What do you say about &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; type of thing.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio 22 Questions for Bill Nye]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: If we're descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ...<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> B: Right, that's a perfect example!<br /> <br /> BN: What purpose to monkeys serve, exactly?<br /> <br /> B: So, there was a lot of those pictures, and a lot of websites have been created showing what those people said, and then having somebody else hold another card responding to it, and they were just beautiful lessons on how to deal with ... I know, but it came out of it, and it's just one of the things that I just loved reading and making them look so ridiculous.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.businessinsider.com/22-responses-to-buzzfeeds-22-messages-from-creationists-2014-2 22 Answers for creationists]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: To us. But to his followers ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Oh yeah. But, so what? Like you said, you didn't convert anyone.<br /> <br /> S: They were all gotcha questions. They were gotcha questions that reveal they don't know anything about the science of evolution.<br /> <br /> BN: It's troubling, because we're the most technologically advanced society – you could say Japan – Finland is very, actually, New Zealand is very good. But this is where the iPhone's designed, right? And yet, we have these people in our midst that have no understanding of where an iPhone comes from, for example.<br /> <br /> J: Or don't even care to question it.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah. So that's why we got ... and the big thing, you guys, for me, the critical issues are climate change and the future of science education, and engineers. So, Ken Ham denies climate change. I mean, that's one of his things. He's doing all he can to indoctrinate young people in that area, Kentucky, mostly.<br /> <br /> E: He may see an income stream from going that approach too. A new revenue stream ...<br /> <br /> BN: He does.<br /> <br /> E: ... yeah, by appealing to the people who deny that climate change is happening.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I'm sure that they're the same people. I mean, if you were scientifically aware, you wouldn't ... I don't think you'd give Answers in Genesis any money, would you?<br /> <br /> J: (Laughs) Probably not.<br /> <br /> B: But speaking of climate change, I saw you on {{w|Last Week Tonight with John Oliver|John Oliver's show}}.<br /> <br /> BN: That was big fun.<br /> <br /> B: And that was fantastic! I just loved it because none of the people actually stress that point, that you can't have the scientific position here, and then a denier here, when there's ... the {{w|false balance}} is ridiculous. And he just brought, like, what, 97 scientists on.<br /> <br /> BN: 96. So I was 97.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, but they were all speaking in this caucophany.<br /> <br /> BN: I just noticed, you guys, what a great thing it was. It's {{w|Mother's Day}}, alright? And these are actors. &quot;Sure! I'll be an extra on Mother's Day. Sure, okay.&quot; (Rogues laugh) Just shows ya, it's a tough business. But everybody was really cool, really gracious, and people were excited to participate. John Oliver's really come into his own.<br /> <br /> B: Really!<br /> <br /> E: Oh boy.<br /> <br /> B: He's been nailing it on his show.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, humor's a great vehicle for exposing nonsense.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, this business of irony. There are books written about the nature of laughter, and what you find ironic. And you'll be shocked to learn that what Michael Shermer calls &quot;socially liberal&quot; - is that what he says? Or is it liberal social? Socially liberal people have a much more highly developed sense of irony. And this is from brain scans. I didn't ... not my thing!<br /> <br /> E: It's not my thing, it's a fact!<br /> <br /> BN: I've been reading this book, &quot;[http://www.amazon.com/Ha-The-Science-When-Laugh/dp/product-description/0465031706 Ha]!&quot; about the nature of laughter, and it's really fascinating.<br /> <br /> J: So, Bill, tell us about the things that you're doing with the government to help affect change.<br /> <br /> BN: The government? Well, just when the White House calls, I show up.<br /> <br /> S: You've got the red phone? The hotline?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, sort of. You may not know, but there's something called the {{w|Office of Science and Technology Policy}}. Somewhat disclosure – a guy who works there was a grad student under the guy who started the Space Policy Institute. So, he'll call me, or text me. Or he'll have somebody call me or text me. And if the President asked you to come to the {{w|White House}} science fair, you show up, sorry man.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;{{w|Maker Faire}}&quot;, a few weeks ago, and that was cool. These people make kooky stuff in order, or learning the technology, developing the technology that allows us to make things that were not possible to make. You know, I'm a mechanical engineer, and now we're all into {{w|3D printing|additive manufacturing}}, have you heard this expression?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: There didn't use to be any such thing. There was {{w|lost-wax casting}}.<br /> <br /> E: Right<br /> <br /> BN: Or was, still is ... and moulding, and stuff. And that's in a sense, additive manufacturing, but not like printing rocket engine nozzles.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, right?<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> J: I know, tell me about it.<br /> <br /> E: Exciting.<br /> <br /> J: I can't believe that.<br /> <br /> BN: It's cool. It's exciting. <br /> <br /> S: How involved are you, at all, as a planetary society, with the Dragon, or other ...<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, so {{w|Elon Musk}} was on our board for many years, or a few years, but he had to recuse himself when he got the government contract for commercial crewed space flight. {{w|SpaceX}} has gotten, this is my memory, but it's right around $500 million, right around half a billion dollars from NASA. And so has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_Corporation Sierra Nevada Space], and another one.<br /> <br /> J: The {{w|Orion (spacecraft)|Orion}}?<br /> <br /> BN: The Orion! Yeah, {{w|Boeing}} has also gotten money. So, the Orion, everybody, is a compromise. But that's the nature of politics.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think? What's the bottom line? What's your feeling about the Orion? Is that gonna be a useful addition, or is it gonna be a wasteful boondoggle, or somewhere in between?<br /> <br /> BN: I'm on camera, right? We are hopeful that it's very successful.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> S: (Quiet) Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: No, you guys, you can go to {{w|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station|Cape Canaveral}}, and there is the constellation gantry tower. You know what I mean by this? This thing that holds up a rocket, that was never built because it was underfunded from the get-go, and people presumed, as has happened so often in that past, that once you've got a program started, people will just keep it going no matter what. Space man, this is America. This is what we're gonna do.<br /> <br /> But after a while, somebody said, &quot;Wait, you're way off in your budget. You're just too far off.&quot; And Orion's what's left over from that.<br /> <br /> J: And it's actually derivative of a few different attempts, right?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, everybody, it's fairly popular when you run for President, if you guys go that route, to say we're gonna go to the {{w|Moon}}. It's really popular to say we're gonna go to {{w|Mars}}. But the scale of it, as this guy we work with – we have a lobbyist at the Planetary Society. He says these people in {{w|United States Congress|Congress}} think it's {{w|Pepsi}} or {{w|Coca-Cola|Coke}}, the Moon or Mars.<br /> <br /> No, one's three days, the other is three years. Keeping people alive for three years in deep space with radiation, with no gravity, it's just not so trivial. Not so easy.<br /> <br /> E: All kinds of problems.<br /> <br /> J: Keeping them from going crazy in a spaceship for three years is a challenge.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I didn't write this joke; it was told to me by Congressman {{w|Adam Schiff}}, who, his district used to include JPL,{{w|Jet Propulsion Laboratory| Jet Propulsion Lab}}. Now it doesn't, it's {{w|Judy Chu}}, but now, it still includes {{w|California Institute of Technology|Caltech}}, so he's in that {{w|Pasadena, California|Pasedena}} space community.<br /> <br /> Alright, so they send this mission to Mars that's auto-return. What's it called, Mars Frontier? Anyway, it's a husband and wife that are of an age where they can no longer have children. So they fly out – and this will be possible in the year 2018. There's an automatic return if you get the trajectory just so, the orbit of Mars will sling you right back to Earth. So, you won't land, you'll just woo-o-o, come back. Take pictures, and I guess we (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> So, in the context of this joke, gentlemen, the spacecraft and everything's going well, but on the way back, suddenly there's no communication. There's no words from the thing. It automatically gets in orbit around the Earth, no communication. They go up with another spacecraft, and look in the window, and both the husband and wife have been dismembered, been torn limb from limb. How is this possible? And then, Adam Schiff says, &quot;Well, you've never been married.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, to your point, this is a very serious concern. 400 days with the same people in a room as big as this table. There's some trouble.<br /> <br /> E: People are still people.<br /> <br /> B: To me, the biggest problem is the radiation that you would encounter. No one has any .. is anyone addressing that?<br /> <br /> BN: Yep, well people<br /> <br /> B: Is it a deal breaker?<br /> <br /> BN: ... argue the radiation is not that strong.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> BN: But I'm not sure that's true. And so, by the way, changing it back to ... and the Planetary Society, we hope, again, to launch, to fly, this thing called the {{w|Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment}}. Did you hear about that? LIFE? So, it's a titanium puck with several microbes that are very well characterized and purified, and properly freeze-dried, and some water bears, the {{w|Tardigrade|tardigrades}}.<br /> <br /> B: Tardigrades, they're awesome! They're incredible.<br /> <br /> E: Good imitation!<br /> <br /> J: You're gonna see if they're gonna die?<br /> <br /> BN: I can't see under the table? And then we'd send them, we were gonna send them to Phobos and back, the moon of Mars. But, it crashed. It was a Russian rocket. {{w|Fobos Grunt}}, it was called. Grunt is Russian, my understanding, is Russian for soil. Anyway, it was gonna scoop up some {{w|Phobos (moon)|Phobos}}, but it crashed in the {{w|Pacific Ocean}}.<br /> <br /> So, we might get a chance to fly that again. And, to your point, we'll see if they can take this radiation. Then, presumably, they'd come back, and we'd light 'em up again, put warm water on them and see what happens. So, like one of the questions ... do you know radiodurans?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Deinococcus radiodurans|Radiodurans}}! {{w|Extremophile}}! <br /> <br /> BN: Who doesn't love those?<br /> <br /> B: Right? It's my favourite {{w|microorganism}}.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, way to go.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, why does that bacterium have the capability to withstand radiation? This is a cool, evolutionary ...<br /> <br /> J: Does it absorb it?<br /> <br /> B: No, it blows apart the {{w|DNA}}, and it can reform. It's amazing stuff. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: It reconstitutes its own DNA.<br /> <br /> S: It's also partly that it's simplified its DNA as much as possible, so there are fewer opportunities for it being destroyed.<br /> <br /> BN: No, but here's the thing. Here's what we love to be charmed by in {{w|astrobiology}}, not quite science fiction, thinking out louding, is maybe Mars was hit by an impactor 3 billion years ago. A living thing got into space on a meteorite before it became a meteorite, and just in 17,000 quick years, in a home in orbit, it made its way to the Earth, and we are all ...<br /> <br /> E: So we are all Martians.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Panspermia}}, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's just a cool thing to wonder about, and it's a wonderful thing to investigate. We have the capability, this generation of people, to send the right spacecraft there and look into that question more carefully. I mean, if we were to discover evidence of life on Mars, it would change the world!<br /> <br /> J: Say it.<br /> <br /> E: (Accent) Change the world!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:03:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Item #1]: A recently published analysis indicates that, if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20-40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> [http://blogs.chapman.edu/press-room/2014/07/23/the-quantum-cheshire-cat-can-a-particle-be-separated-from-its-properties/ Item #2]: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself, so the particle was in one location while its magnetic moment was in another.<br /> [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uoia-pun072814.php Item #3]: Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity, in an indium alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real, and one fake. Then I ask my expert skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Are you guys ready for this week?<br /> <br /> R: We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah. As ready as last week.<br /> <br /> S: Nah, there's no real theme this week.<br /> <br /> R: Ah, okay.<br /> <br /> S: No theme. Okay, here we go: Item #1: A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 – 40% of the world will have serious {{w|Water scarcity|water shortage}} by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> <br /> Item #2: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So the particle was in one location while its {{w|magnetic moment}} was in another. And Item #3: Researchers have successfully created {{w|Cooper pair|Cooper pairs}}, the hallmark of {{w|superconductivity}} in an {{w|Indium}} alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: You heard him.<br /> <br /> R: Why couldn't there have been a theme, and the theme was {{w|Cheetah|cheetahs}}, or {{w|Sloth|sloths}}?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, cuddly animals or ...<br /> <br /> R: Instead, the theme is shit Rebecca doesn't know! Again! I'm getting sick of this, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Things that go meow.<br /> <br /> B: I don't mind!<br /> <br /> R: Ugh! Bob, go first.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Bob is going last. Evan, you go first.<br /> <br /> R: Ugh!<br /> <br /> E: Okay. Steve, I'm gonna start with the first one, in which you wrote, &quot;A recently published analysis indicates that blah, blah, blah,&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> S: Yada yada<br /> <br /> E: If we continue our current mix of electricity generation, okay, I buy that. 20 – 40% of the world will have serious water shortage! Okay, why is that? By 2020? And there'll be a global water shortage by 2040? I don't know. This smacks of other things we've kind of heard about in the past, in which these sorts of predictions are made, and they don't always turn out to, I think, be as serious as this. That's not to say it's not a serious issue, but these things tend to get I think, overestimated, and maybe a little over hyped. I don't know if that's one of these.<br /> <br /> Well, moving on to the second one, &quot;Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle.&quot; That's mind boggling, frankly. I don't think there's any other way to put it. Particle was in one location. It's magnetic moment (laughs) was in another. Oh, I've never heard that term, &quot;Magnetic moment,&quot; before.<br /> <br /> J: I know! I thought that was odd.<br /> <br /> B: Where you been?<br /> <br /> E: What? Magnetic moment?<br /> <br /> R: I'm really glad he said that, because I assumed I was the only person who didn't know.<br /> <br /> E: Bob, tell me one time that those words have ever been spoken like that on this show. I can't remember a single time. We've never talked about the magnetic moment of particles, never!<br /> <br /> B: You know, I bet I've mentioned it a couple times in the last 470 episodes.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I bet he has.<br /> <br /> E: Some listener will correct me on that if it's out there, but I frankly, I don't remember.<br /> <br /> B: Frankly, I forget what we talk about last week, dude. Come on.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this is too wild, I think, to not be true. Why the hell, Steve, would you throw this in here? This is, you're really trying to trip us up here. And how they've done it, who the hell knows? High speed collisions, you know? Whatever.<br /> <br /> The last one, researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs. An indium alloy at near room temperature. &lt;I&gt;In&lt;/I&gt; an indium alloy at near room temperature. Okay. Indium, huh? So, basically, have we actually hit the gold standard here.<br /> <br /> S: The holy grail.<br /> <br /> E: Well, I mean, is this some sort of ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Cold fusion}}?<br /> <br /> E: ... what were we talking about. Cold fusion! Thank you. Kind of thing. It's kid of what we're talking about 'cause of the whole room temperature thing. That seems to be very, very ... I'll go with my gut and say that I think the water shortage one is the fiction. I think there's some merit to it, there's something going on. I think that those estimates are too soon though. We may have a serious problem maybe a hundred years from now, but not 5, 8, one generation from now. I think that's an exaggeration. So, that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Jay.<br /> <br /> J: Okay, this first one, very smart, Steve. This first one about the water, the water shortage. I've read quite a bit about that. I've heard about it. I think I've seen a TV show about the water shortage claims that are coming, and a lot of this hype about, are we shipping all of our water to China, and everything? I don't know.<br /> <br /> I do think though, that there may be some truth in this, but I'm not quite sure that this news item itself is completely true. It seems plausible that we could have water shortages. I just don't know, Steve, the connection here with electricity. I'm a little confused about.<br /> <br /> Okay, the second one about the particle being separated from its magnetic moment. I kind of agree with Evan. It's an oddball item, and it seems to be either that they tried to do it, and they couldn't do it. I just don't see a good fake here.<br /> <br /> This last one, however, I would think that if this happened, the way that Steve is saying it, that there'd be nothing preventing my browser from exploding in my face with news items coming up about room temperature superconductivity. So I'm gonna say that the third one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's where I was leaning. The only one of these that I can even really parse is the one about electricity generation and water shortage. And yeah, I do know that there is a connection between those two. I think that it's because nuclear power plants and coal plants too, maybe, require a lot of water for cooling. That one makes sense to me, and, yeah, global water shortage by 2040, that can mean a lot of things. It's kind of vague, what kind of shortage are we talking about? We obviously already have problems with droughts and stuff in parts of the United States, but also, we fly drinking water from Fiji into our Starbucks. So ...<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah! {{w|Fiji}} water? Do you not know about Fiji water? Fiji water literally takes the only potable water in Fiji, and leaves the residents to drink sewage water. Fun times. So (Laughs) yeah. Global water shortage, okay, probably something that majorly affects the developing nations more, but yeah.<br /> <br /> So, I'm going between the other two. I don't know what a magnetic moment is. I assumed it's something like it's position, in space or something. I don't know. Why not? But yeah, the room temperature thing. I was wondering if it was something like cold fusion-esque, and Evan and Jay seem to think so. And so, I think, yeah. If that's what this has to do with, then, yeah, I find that the least believable. So I'm going to go with the Cooper pairs at room temperature being the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: A-a-and, Bob.<br /> <br /> B: Alright, the water shortage, these numbers seem a little dramatic to me. I always heard it's coming. 20 – 40%! You know, 6 years, potentially? Seri ... and 2040 ... what is a global water shortage? How extensive? How global would that be? But I don't have huge problems with that.<br /> <br /> The second one, yeah, {{w|quantum mechanics}} is crazy! Absolutely, I totally buy this. I mean, you talking about things like {{w|Quantum entanglement|entanglement}} and {{w|Quantum superposition|superposition}}, yeah, I could totally see this. It's a little surprising to me, but you gotta just learn to roll with quantum mechanics, unless of course, the claims are pseudoscientific. But, so yeah, that one doesn't surprise me. I really, really hope that's true, 'cause that's fantastic.<br /> <br /> Yeah, I got a problem with the third one. Cooper pairs, come on. Room temperature? No. We're not there yet. And I have to agree with Jay that this would be all over. This would be huge. That's the holy grail, right there! Room temperature. Bet they didn't think of that one!<br /> <br /> I remember first hearing about high temperature superconductivity back, what Steve, '90's? Early '90's? No, late '80's maybe.<br /> <br /> S: Something like that.<br /> <br /> B: And I'm thinking, &quot;Oh boy!&quot; You know, and now, twenty-something, thirty years later, it's still mysterious. So, yeah, I'm just not buying that we've got that yet. I mean, I really hope I'm wrong on this one, but I severely doubt it, so that's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, well, you all agree with #2, so let's start there. Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So, the particle was in one place, while it's magnetic moment was in another. You guys all think this one is science ...<br /> <br /> R: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: and this one is ... So you guys don't know what a magnetic moment is?<br /> <br /> R: Well, Bob ... I <br /> <br /> J: I know what it is!<br /> <br /> E: It's when you look across the room, and you stare at that special person in the eyes, and you have a connection that you can't quite explain.<br /> <br /> R: (Singing) This magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so the magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantitiy that determines the torque-able experienced in an external {{w|magnetic field}}.<br /> <br /> B: You are correct, sir!<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, it's basically a propery of the magnetic, it's own magnetism, think about it that way. A bar {{w|magnet}}, an {{w|electron}}, a {{w|molecule}}, and a {{w|planet}} all have magnetic moments. And apparently, so do {{w|neutrons}}. This one is science. And Bob's right. That wacky quantum mechanics can do anything, apparently.<br /> <br /> B: Almost.<br /> <br /> S: Very ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Deus ex machina}} of Science or Fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: So, what the scientists did was they used a neutron {{w|Interferometry|interferometer}}. Ever hear of that, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you take a beam of neutrons, you split them into two paths, or the neutrons could basically take one of two ...<br /> <br /> J: The two paths, I know.<br /> <br /> B: What?<br /> <br /> J: You actually described it pretty well, Steve. Now, taking that to the next step though, when you decouple these {{w|Electric power conversion|power converters}} ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: and you cross phase them through the actual early, early {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} converter type systems.<br /> <br /> B: (Snickering) Java ...<br /> <br /> J: What you get is a semi crossed {{w|Parallax|paralaxed}} {{w|Paralysis|paralyzation}} of the {{w|Coma|comatose}} {{w|Crematory|cremators}}.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Did you get the power converters at {{w|Hitachi station}}?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Technobabble}}!<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now, what really happened was, you could send this beam of neutrons simultaneously down two paths! This is standard quantium mechanics, right?<br /> <br /> J: Are you saying there's two paths you can go down, but in the long run, it's not too late to change the road you're on?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct, because the neutrons can decide later if they went down Path A, or Path B, right? They go down both simultaneously until they interact with something, then they have to choose the path. That's standard quantum mechanics. But what they were able to do in this experiment was by aligning the magnetic moments of the two streams, and then selecting for one stream, they could select for neutrons that had to go through one path. Does that make sense? They basically filtered out one of the two paths.<br /> <br /> So now they have, even though those streams came together again, they could select out the neutrons that chose Path A, and filter out all the neutrons that chose Path B. But at the same time, they could also align the magnetic moment of the neutrons, and they did it differently for the two paths. And what they were able to show was that the neutrons at the other end went down Path A, but their magnetic moment essentially went down Path B. Does that make sense?<br /> <br /> E: Uh ...<br /> <br /> B: That's sweet as hell, man.<br /> <br /> E: Sure!<br /> <br /> B: I love quantum mechanics.<br /> <br /> S: So, they separated the particle from its own magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's ...<br /> <br /> B: I love it!<br /> <br /> S: Crazy quantum mechanics. Alright, so that one is science. So, I guess we'll go on to #3. Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity in an indium alloy at near room temperature. Bob, Jay, and Rebecca think this one is fiction. Evan thinks this one is science. And this one is ... so you guys are all assuming that creating Cooper pairs ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god.<br /> <br /> S: ... is equal to superconductivity.<br /> <br /> R: Look, I don't know, Steve.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I am!<br /> <br /> S: What if they were able to create Cooper pairs even though the material itself wasn't superconducting? Bob, you know what Cooper pairs are.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, the electrons get bound together, and they can just slide through, and not be disturbed by any part of the material. It's one of the hallmarks of a special class of superconductivity, but, yeah, technically, you're right. And if it's true, I'm gonna kill you.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Well ...<br /> <br /> E: On his birthday?<br /> <br /> S: It is technically correct, but this one is the fiction!<br /> <br /> R: Hurray!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: So ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! I got one right!<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Cooper pairs are basically superconductivity. But, this is based on a real item. I always get a chuckle when you guys say, &quot;How could Steve think of this?&quot; Well, I'm not making stuff up. I'm always basing it off of some item. I'm just tweaking.<br /> <br /> B: He's not that creative!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I don't have to be that creative, yeah. What this ... the item basically is just physicists understanding a little bit better, the nature of superconductivity. And the hope is that one day, one magical day, they'll use this knowledge in order to be able to finally get the &quot;holy grail,&quot; and make room temperature superconductors. But, yeah, they have not created anything. They just were able to, make some further investigation to sort of further understanding essentially the quantum glue that holds these Cooper pairs together. That was the breakthrough.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. But they did use indium; So, I pulled that out of there. Indium, by the way, indium is an element. It is atomic #49. It is a metal. It's a soft metal with a fairly low melting point. It's chemically similar to {{w|gallium}} and {{w|thallium}}, indium. Pretty cool.<br /> <br /> E: It sounds like two dwarves from {{w|The Lord of the Rings|Lord of the Rings}}.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> B: Gallium! Thalium!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Right, okay, let's go on to #1. A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 to 40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040 is ... science. Doesn't mean this is going to come ...<br /> <br /> R: Hooray for water scarcity!<br /> <br /> S: So, the connection, as Rebecca said, is we need to use a lot of water to cool these power generators. Whether it's nuclear, or it's coal, or whatever. You can't let them overheat. A lot of power plants don't really track how much water they're using. So the authors are saying this is a problem. We need to more carefully track this.<br /> <br /> R: Really? Jeez.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, and what they mean by a water shortage is that you will essentially have to choose between power generation and drinking water, that we won't have enough to do both.<br /> <br /> E: Hrmm...<br /> <br /> S: By 2040 – which doesn't sound that far in the future when you think about it -<br /> <br /> E: A generation.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that the entire world will be experiencing this water shortage if we are meeting our electricity needs at that time with our current mix of power generation. So, what's the solution? Well, they make a number of recommendations. Improve energy efficiency; better research on alternative cooling cycles; researching on how much water power plants use; massive investments in wind and solar, because wind and solar don't use a lot of water; and abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water stressed places, which is, they say, half the planet, because that's what uses the most water to make electricity.<br /> <br /> So, yeah, pretty frightening extrapolation, but of course, it's one study, this is &lt;I&gt;their&lt;/I&gt; analysis. These are always difficult. There's a lot of moving parts, you know.<br /> <br /> E: That's why I thought it wasn't science, you know.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you know. I just said, it's a published analysis that indicates this. I thought you could believe it or not believe it. But any single analysis like this, like, &quot;We're reaching {{w|peak oil}}!&quot; Any of those, you always got to take them with a grain of salt because, you know, you leave out one factor, and it can change the whole outcome, you know? So, it's very tricky. And I'd like to see that there's a consensus, that multiple independant analyses are overlapping, coming to the same conclusion. So ... but it definitely is one more reason that even if their projections are overly grim, it's one more reason to get off fossil fuels, and to make, as Bob suggests, a massive investment in at least solar energy. So, there you have it. Good job, guys!<br /> <br /> J: Thank you!<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, except Evan.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you!<br /> <br /> == Announcements: &lt;small&gt;(1:20:33)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Jay, before we get to the quote, I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, I want to give a very sincere thank you to everyone who has donated to our legal defence fund. We are already, we've covered about 60% of the legal expenses that we have made so far. So, we have covered a huge chunk of our legal expenses with the donations.<br /> <br /> Obviously, we can't know ahead of time what the ultimate costs are gonna be. I have estimates from my lawyer, and it's a lot. You know, it's probably gonna be somewhere between 60 and 70,000 dollars if the thing goes the distance. So, we do have a ways to go before we got there. But, in just one week, there has been an incredible outpouring of support for the SGU, for our defence against this lawsuit, and of course, people donating to support our defence, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it.<br /> <br /> We also wanted to point out that the SGU, always looking to expand our activity, has a new webpage on our SGU homepage, the Science News page. So, if you go to [http://www.theskepticsguide.org theskepticsguide.org], and you click on the science news banner, you will see that we're putting up about two to three news items per day. We're going to be expanding it, but we're selecting items that are like, the coolest news items of the day. And Evan is doing some reviews of ... Evan has got, you've got two that you're doing. Why don't you describe them really quick for us, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, thanks, Steve. So, I am doing two reviews, like, you said. One is ... I call it the SGU Cutting Room Floor. So, these are some items that we would have loved to have gotten to on the last episode of the show, but just didn't have the time. There's always more items than we have time for. And then the other one is called the Top 5 Ridiculous Comments of the Week. So, I scour the internet, looking for people making all sorts of ridiculous comments on all sorts of different things, and I try to condense that down to the top 5 each week. So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yep, and we're adding some special segments. We have a Weird, Wildlife Wednesday segment that we're putting out. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/author/kate Kate Christian] is doing that for us. Kate's really been helpf7ul with all of our social media efforts. So, I'd like to thank her as well for helping us get this going. And send us, if you have any ideas for science news bits you'd like to see on the Science News page, let us know. We're always looking to expand the content that we're putting there.<br /> <br /> And, of course, all of this is interfacing with our Facebook page, which we have been extremely active on as well. So, if you haven't checked out our Facebook page recently, check it out. Check out our Science News page. Send us ideas for stuff you'd like to see there.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:23:14)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;“I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.”-Lawrence M. Krauss&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, give us the quote.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;I hope that every person at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.” (Shouting) {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}}!<br /> <br /> S: I like that! I like that. It's a very good quote. It is a good, sobering, humbling experience to have something you firmly believe be proven completely and utterly wrong.<br /> <br /> J: That was sent in by a listener named, Brendan Shwass, from New Zealand. Brendan, we're fully expecting to meet you in person when we will be in New Zealand, I think, what is that, the first week of December?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me this week, everyone.<br /> <br /> B: Sure, Steve.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> R: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you guys.<br /> <br /> R: What a better way to spend your birthday.<br /> <br /> J: I love you.<br /> <br /> E: Hey, happy birthda-a-ay!<br /> <br /> J: You're one of the best people I know, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you brotha. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> Before Greenwich got Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude, used by sailors.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Prime meridian (Greenwich)|Zero Longitude}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> All batteries need to have three things in order to work: An electrolite, an anode, and a cathode.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Battery (electricity)|Battery components}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The KT extinction boundary has been renamed the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary.<br /> <br /> Humanity is headed for a global water shortage&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Looming water shortage]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y<br /> |General Science = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> |SGU = y<br /> |Technology = y}}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_473&diff=9571 2015-01-17T20:11:02Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Who&#039;s That Noisy (36:51) */ Minor corrections</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 473<br /> |episodeDate = August 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Fluffydinosaur1.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |rebecca = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = BN: {{w|Bill Nye}}<br /> |guest2 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no second guest --&gt;<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-02.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44275.0.html<br /> |qowText = I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey everybody<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys.<br /> <br /> S: And Evan Bernstein<br /> <br /> E: Steve, did you say it's July 29th?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct!<br /> <br /> E: As in July 29th, 1964?<br /> <br /> S: 1964?<br /> <br /> E: 50 years ago, to the day, er...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, well, this day in Skepticism, Steve Novella was born!<br /> <br /> (Rogues cheer)<br /> <br /> J: That's actually relevant too! That's really cool! Happy birthday, brother!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you so much.<br /> <br /> E: Happy birthday.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. I'm 50.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel?<br /> <br /> S: The big 5 – 0<br /> <br /> J: Holy crap.<br /> <br /> S: The Y-5-0<br /> <br /> B: Oh mother ....<br /> <br /> S: Four bits.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel? Do you feel different?<br /> <br /> S: Half a century.<br /> <br /> R: Have you bought a sports car?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, no, I'm way past my midlife crisis already.<br /> <br /> R: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: I decided to start a podcast for my midlife crisis.<br /> <br /> R: That's sad.<br /> <br /> E: Look what it's gotten you.<br /> B: You freak.<br /> <br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:11)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 2, 1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by Parliament.<br /> <br /> R: Well, you know what, you share a birthday with {{w|Greenwich Mean Time}}! Did you know that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Is that right?<br /> <br /> R: Yah!<br /> <br /> E: Awesome!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (British accent) Greenwich Mean Time, I say.<br /> <br /> R: Well, oh, wait. No, you don't, because this was August 2nd, the day this podcast comes out.<br /> <br /> B: Psyche!<br /> <br /> R: Sorry ...<br /> <br /> S: Close.<br /> <br /> E: In podcast land, you share, but not in real life.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Well, there goes my big segue. Anyway, in 1880, on August 2nd, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by the {{w|Parliament of the United Kingdom|UK Parliament}}. Which is, it's always weird to me when I think about time suddenly coming into existence. (Laughs) I mean, obviously, time has always existed, because it always requires time.<br /> <br /> E: Oh!<br /> <br /> R: (Laughs) But for a long time, each town would have it's own, particular time; and there was really no desperate need to make sure that they were all coordinated but once ...<br /> <br /> B: Train schedules!<br /> <br /> R: Train schedules were one thing, but the reason why Greenwich Mean Time was adopted when it was, was apparently more for naval navigation, and it was only standardized and used across Europe once train transportation increased. And then it wasn't until three years after it was officially adopted that the United States adopted it as well. And that was when telegraph lines first started transmitting (inaudible) &lt;!type?&gt; signals to all the cities.<br /> <br /> B: Ah-h-h...<br /> <br /> R: So, yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Cool.<br /> <br /> R: And it was adopted worldwide, November 1st, 1884.<br /> <br /> J: Cool! Very cool!<br /> <br /> R: And then there was time.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, before Greenwich was Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude. So, when sailors – as you said – sailors would set their clocks to Greenwich Time, because then they would estimate their longitude by how far they were from Greenwich, basically. Based upon, &quot;Oh, it's noon! And the sun is two hours past being directly overhead. So I must be two hours past zero longitude.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> J: (British accent) There you have it.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Mike Adams Follow Up &lt;small&gt;(3:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/07/28/fbi-turns-up-heat-on-mike-adams-as-health-ranger-fiasco-widens-plus-adams-archive/<br /> <br /> S: So, Jay, you're gonna give us a quick follow up on the whole {{w|NaturalNews|Mike Adams}} hubbub from last week.<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Ugh.<br /> <br /> S: Things are happening so fast we actually missed some important updates when we recorded the last show.<br /> <br /> J: Well, yeah, the quick summary is that Mike wrote a blog post where he compares people that support or are neutral about {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMOs}} to the {{w|Nazi Germany|Nazi regime}} and, in essence, put out a death threat against anybody that supports GMOs, saying that good people – who are anti-GMO – should kill people who are pro-GMO. And he riddled his blog post with pictures of {{w|Adolf Hitler|Hitler}}, and the Nazi party, and all the terrible things that they did, using that as ...<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Swastika#As_the_symbol_of_Nazism|Swastikas}}.<br /> <br /> J: yeah, swastikas, everything, using it as a way to convince his readers that they need to take action. Now, the big thing that he did, also, was that he requested that someone make a website that lists the offending parties, people that support GMO. And Steve, and {{w|David Gorski}}, and a ton of other journalists and news outlets were listed on this website. And then things got stranger.<br /> <br /> If that blog post wasn't strange and horrible enough, the update is that now the {{w|Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI}} is really turning up the heat on Mike, and they're investigating him. And some legitimate proof has come down the pike through web forensics that Mike is actually the person who created the listing website. Let me give you the details behind that.<br /> <br /> Now keep in mind, he supposedly requested during his blog, in the middle of his blog, for someone to create this website. Wouldn't it be convenient if somebody created this list of people that we can mark as our enemies, the big supporters of GMO, the big offenders. The &quot;people that should be killed,&quot; right? Then this website pops up very soon after, and Mike updates his blog saying, &quot;and here's a link to the website that some reader of my blog created.&quot;<br /> <br /> Turns out, Mike is that reader. It turns out that that website was created a short while before Mike actually posted his blog post calling for these people to be killed.<br /> <br /> B: Oh-h-h, nice.<br /> <br /> J: It also turns out that the formatting of the website – those two pages, specifically – Mike's page, and the listing page of the supporters of GMO have very similar formats and layout. And not just they're both using Wordpress, but similar in ways that someone looking at the code, and the &quot;forensics&quot; can determine that it's probably the same exact code base. I don't know how else to put this ... (shouting) Busted! Like, yeah, Mike, you got caught with your pants way down!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Jay, even more important, what did he say about that website before it was even proven that he was the author?<br /> <br /> J: What did he say? Well, what he did was ...<br /> <br /> B: How did he ...<br /> <br /> J: He did a series of updates on his blog. So, he's littering his blog with these updates. &quot;Update: I didn't actually, these are not my words. I didn't say to kill these people. I'm just quoting some nazi bad guy from 50 years ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: No, no, no, he was quoting the current {{w|President of Germany}}, who was talking about the {{w|Wolf's Lair|Wolf's Den}} assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler.<br /> <br /> R: Well, he said he was paraphrasing.<br /> <br /> S: ''Paraphrasing''. But then I also heard that the German president didn't actually say that.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he said, &quot;I was paraphrasing the German government.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's all irrelevant. He constructed a narrative. {{w|Monsanto}} is evil. They're like the nazis. People who are pro-GMO are paid Monsanto collaborators. They are like nazi collaborators. It was morally acceptable – in fact, an imperitive – to kill nazi collaborators. He laid it all out there. Then he makes the Monsantocollaborators website, claims somebody else did it. And then when the heat gets turned up, he has the audacity to claim, &quot;You know what? I'm beginning to think that this Monsantocollaborators website is a {{w|False flag|false flag}} operation. That Monsanto created it just to make me look like an idiot.&quot;<br /> <br /> And then it turns out, as Jay was pointing out, that &lt;I&gt;he&lt;/I&gt; made the website! So he's pretty much busted in a flat out lie. And there's no other way to really interpret it in my mind.<br /> <br /> J: He didn't have ...<br /> <br /> E: What'd he think?<br /> <br /> J: Well, Evan, what he thought was ...<br /> <br /> E: How could he not think he was not gonna get caught?<br /> <br /> J: In his stupor of hatred, he really thought that he was gonna incite people to take some type of action. Now, I can't say – I can only speculate – and this is, of course, all in my opinion. I honestly don't know if Mike actually wanted people like my brother, Steve, and for David Gorski to get killed. I don't know. But he really made it seem crystal clear that that was the message. That truly was the message.<br /> <br /> E: And, where's the mainstream media on all of this? You know, I'm seeing a lot of writings from people in skeptical circles, science circles, and so forth, but I've not seen it on {{w|ABC News|ABC}}. I have not seen it on {{w|CNN}}. I've not seen it in any of those places.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it would be interesting if it did get wider mainstream coverage, but, we'll see.<br /> <br /> E: He gets plenty of coverage in other ways, all in positive ways.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's true.<br /> <br /> E: On {{w|The Oprah Winfrey Show|Oprah}}, and {{w|The Dr. Oz Show|Dr. Oz}}, and all these ...<br /> <br /> S: The best thing is though, that the FBI is investigating. He crossed a line, where now the FBI is looking into this. So, if they could get access to information to not just strongly suggest, but to actually prove that Mike Adams was behind the Monsantocollaborators website, then he is &lt;I&gt;legally&lt;/I&gt; busted; then he is totally busted. And, I don't know! I don't know how much the law allows for the FBI ... what actions to take against him.<br /> <br /> Either he was deliberately inciting to murder, or this was reckless endangerment. Then, at the very least, his reputation should be in tatters. And that's the one thing that we could most help with, is to make sure everybody remembers ... he should never live this down in my opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Never, ever! Well, we're never gonna let people forget it.<br /> <br /> R: Indeed.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, let's move on. Enough time on this guy.<br /> <br /> === Battery Advance &lt;small&gt;(9:44)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/scientists-approach-holy-grail-of-battery-technology-but-is-it-more-of-a-holey-grail<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about (sarcastic excitement) an exciting new advance in battery technology! Finally! Because we've never had this before!<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yes, another one! (Evan laughs) So ...<br /> <br /> R: It's always 5 to 10 years away, so, has it been 5 to 10 years?<br /> <br /> E: Since we last spoke about this one!<br /> <br /> B: So, scientists have apparently come very close to what some have called the holy grail of battery technology, and that's the phrase that got me. When I see holy grail ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh!<br /> <br /> B: in anything related to science, I perk up. I'm like, &quot;Alright, what the hell is going on here?&quot; Especially battery technology. We need a damn holy grail. So, {{w|Lithium-ion battery|lithium-ion batteries}}, they're one of the premier – I'm sure everyone's heard of them – they're one of the premier, most popular batteries for portable, and rechargeable consumer electronics. They've got many, many very good qualities, excellent energy density. They only slowly lose charge when they're not being used. There's no {{w|memory effect}}, which is kind of an often-abused term.<br /> <br /> Memory effect was used specifically to apply to {{w|Nickel-cadmium battery|nickel cadmium}}, and {{w|Nickel-metal hydride battery|nickel-metal hyride batteries}}. And it had to do with the fact that if you charge one of those batteries before it was fully discharged, then it would slowly decrease the amount of battery life that you would have.<br /> <br /> E: Oh-h! Yeah, you remember that? What a pain! Having to cycle your batteries, and stuff? What a pain.<br /> <br /> B: Right. So, lithium-ion does not suffer from that at all, although they do suffer, of course, from just general age-related issues that are just so annoying, so much so that it's one of the most common complaints about smart phones. So, battery life is still an issue, and not just for smartphones, obviously. There's so many things, cars especially.<br /> <br /> So, for a long time now, scientists have been trying to create a lithium-ion battery that has more lithium, actually in it. So, before I go on, I just got to cover real fast the basic battery components. All batteries need to have three of these things here, these three things.<br /> <br /> An {{w|electrolyte}}, which is basically just a source of electrons. An {{w|anode}}, which dispenses the electrons. And a {{w|cathode}}, which receives them. You need those three. You don't have those three, you pretty much don't have a battery.<br /> <br /> So, lithium-ion batteries have {{w|lithium}} in the electrolyte, which is good, but the anode is only partially lithium. It's not fully lithium. And an all-lithium anode would in fact be a huge improvement because it would allow for things like, it would be much lighter, it would be more energy-dense, and those are two of, I would say, the top three or four most desired qualities of these types of batteries.<br /> <br /> They've had problems though, with these fully lithiumized anodes – I don't think that's a word. Anodes made of lithium expand much more than any other material, and it causes cracks to form in the anode, releasing ions. And these ions create stringy {{w|Dendrite (metal)|dendrites}}, they call 'em, that shorten the battery life. There's chemical reactions between the electrolyte and the anode, and that depletes some of the electrolyte. It shortens the battery life. And, I'm sure you've all heard, of course, of the fire hazards that can happen because of this, because it gets so hot.<br /> <br /> So dealing with these exact issues is precisely what the researchers from {{w|Stanford University}} reporting in – what was it – the {{w|Nature Nanotechnology|Journal of Nature and Nanotechnology}}. Now, they're not quite there yet – how predictable is that – but they do seem to be extremely close. Close enough, I think, that I think it's not premature at all to publish about it, because it is an interesting advance.<br /> <br /> So what they did was create a coating for the anode that's made of these super-tiny carbon nanospheres. So, the nanospheres protect the anode, and prevent all these drawbacks that I've just mentioned. The ratio of lithium, the anode pushes out to the amount put in during a charge cycle is at 99%. So, you get that? That's called the [http://depts.washington.edu/matseed/batteries/MSE/definitions.html Coulombic efficiency]. But it needs to be 99.9% before it's really commercially viable.<br /> <br /> But this is really such a little difference that I think they should be able to make minor improvements, tweak it, and they'll be able to bring it up to snuff with hopefully not a huge amount of effort 'cause clearly, this fundamental concept is far superior to any of the previous attempts that have been made with a fully lithium anode, so that's really cool.<br /> <br /> Clearly, I think this is a really fantastic advance with much promise, but I do have a few problems. First of all, it's battery technology! We hear about advances, like Steve said, all the time! And then bam – nothing! I read article after article that sounds like a fantastic idea. &quot;Wow! This is really gonna change things!&quot; And then, that's like, literally, the last thing I hear about it. And that's generally because there's like, these key battery factors, and one of them or more will invariably fail. Whether it's the scalability, the cost, the recharging cycles; there's always something – a key thing – that is missing that prevents a lot of these things from just really taking off.<br /> <br /> Related to that is the fact that they're not quite at their goal yet, right? They're close, but often, going that last yard, or 9/10ths of a percent in this case, that's often the big problem, right? The last little bit is like, &quot;Damn, we can't quite get it.&quot; And who knows what kind of problems they could encounter that would prevent them from going even that little bit extra. I don't know enough about battery technology to really say what the stumbling blocks could be, although they are confident. But, big deal, everybody's confident.<br /> <br /> And then, finally, like I mentioned earlier, and most annoying to me, was that they described this as a holy grail of battery technology. But, I read a lot of news items on this, and a lot of these reports were saying that the technology could extend the battery life 2 to 3 times!<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's nice.<br /> <br /> B: That's really nice!<br /> <br /> S: It's incremental though.<br /> <br /> B: Holy grail? The holy grail is not incremental. That's a great way to say it. And they even said that affordable electric cars with a 300 mile range. Wait, whoa! $25,000 electric car, 300 mile range? Aren't we close to 300 miles now? If it could go 6, 7, 800, now you're talking!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think you're right, Bob. This is a potential incremental advance in lithium-ion battery technology – hardly worth the hype that they're giving it. And you're also right ... I mean, I literally see a news item about like this every week. I mean, &lt;I&gt;weekly&lt;/I&gt; there is some new press release about some new potential way of eeking more out of a lithium-ion battery. Some sound greater than this in potential.<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, that's right! Some of them, there's even more problems ...<br /> <br /> S: About a year or two ago, I read about using nano-structuring the lithium, and getting ten times the capacity out of it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: But then there's this little problem with how much can be discharged. So, the {{w|discharger}} is a little on the slow end to be actually useful for anything, but ... or, whatever. As you say, it's always something like that, because there's so many potential fatal deal killers with battery technology, that you have to have all your ducks in a row, or it's just a nice lab experiment.<br /> <br /> The other category, that it's like, literally every week, there's an amazing breakthrough, is the solar cell technology. Same thing.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes, yes, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: And they're just talking about some incremental advance in one aspect of the many possible things. And, you know, the thing about solar technology is that it &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; incrementally advancing. Each, every year, we're a little bit better. Okay, but the hype that comes with it now is just incredible.<br /> <br /> B: Right, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again: These types of technologies, batteries and solar {{w|photovoltaics}}, or just solar energy in general, these are the types of things that, god, if I had a trillion dollars laying around, this is the stuff that needs a {{w|Manhattan Project}}. Billions ... because these are the things that will impact and help the entire world just in one fell swoop!<br /> <br /> E: I don't know. Are they gonna come eventually? The whole time for 9+ years we've been talking about this is, it's always been small, incremental stage. Isn't it just the nature of this particular science that this is how it's gonna be, and ...<br /> <br /> S: It's the nature of many sciences. But Evan brings up a good point too, Bob. We may never have that one advance that gives us the 10 time improvement, the order of magnitude. It may be we just need the 2 to 3 times advance that's actually really good when you think about it. And you stack a few of those together, and then you're there. You know?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's fine. But, hey, we can speed up those incremental advances, can't we?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right?<br /> <br /> === Ray Comfort's Gravity Gaffe &lt;small&gt;(18:13)&lt;/small&gt; === <br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ray-comforts-gravity-gaffe<br /> <br /> <br /> S: But, Evan, do you think {{w|Ray Comfort}} can wrap his head around advances in battery and solar technology?<br /> <br /> B: Nice.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, are you kidding? He is Mr. Science. Move over, {{w|Bill Nye}}; get out of the way {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}}; Ray Comfort is here! Evangelical Minister, author, video producer, perhaps best known for the so-called [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Banana_fallacy banana falacy], in which he claimed that the perfection of the design of the banana is an example of God's hand in creation. Yes.<br /> <br /> B: Too bad &lt;I&gt;we&lt;/I&gt; designed the {{w|Cavendish banana subgroup|Cavendish banana}}.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Irrelevant! Not in the Bible.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: So, on July 26th, he threw this pearl of wisdom before his swine - (Bob laughs) - his Facebook readers. &quot;If the Bible isn't God-inspired, explain why ... how the writer of the {{w|Book of Job}} knew 3000 years ago that, 'The Earth hangs upon nothing.'&quot; And that's Job, chapter 26, verse 7? Is that how that works?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: And then he writes, &quot;It wasn't until thousands of years later that science discovered that gravity doesn't exist in space, and that this massive Earth does indeed hang upon nothing.&quot; He later went back and revised that a bit to read, that gravity doesn't exist in space as it does on Earth, and that this massive Earth does, indeed, hang upon nothing. So, essentially he kind of said the same thing.<br /> <br /> You know what this reminded me? So, remember those old commercials from the 70's for {{w|E. F. Hutton &amp; Co.|E.F. Hutton}}? Right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen. So, I'm gonna borrow that, and say, &quot;When Ray Comfort talks about science, skeptics listen, and then correct him!&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Not before laughing.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly. You have to laugh at first about this stuff, and then you can get serious. I laughed when I read one Twitterer who put this out there. He said, &quot;First of all, the Earth doesn't hang, for a start. It's not the bloody family portrait.&quot; (Laughs) Which, I love that picture about, that's exactly ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's a Christmas ornament!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Exactly, right?<br /> <br /> B: It's! In! Orbit!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Yeah, and you can't help yourself. Anywhere you start with this, you're gonna wind up correcting him, so there's really nowhere to go wrong here. So, {{w|Gravitation|gravity}} is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It's one of the four {{w|Fundamental interaction|fundamental forces}} of nature along with {{w|electromagnetism}}, and the nuclear {{w|Strong interaction|strong force}}, and the {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}! And the phenomenon of gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of {{w|spacetime}}.<br /> <br /> But Comfort was under the impression that there's no gravity in space, hence the reason why astronauts appear to float around as they do. But there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; gravity throughout the universe, right? The entire {{w|Observable universe|visible universe}} has revealed the wonders of gravity in all of space and time, and there's just boatloads of evidence to support it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, the entire structure of the known universe is basically authored by gravity. It's the most far-reaching force there is! It's like, hello!<br /> <br /> E: So, obviously, a lot of people chimed in on this, both supporters of his, and people who actually understand science, in making legitimate attempts to correct him. You know, amongst the giggles and things.<br /> <br /> So, he went ahead and corrected himself, a few hours later. Basically, here's what he said, &quot;Up until today, I was one of the ''many'' who believe there's zero gravity in space. We live and learn. Thanks to the many {{w|atheism|atheists}} who kindly corrected me.&quot; But then, he actually goes on by also saying, &quot;{{w|Isaac Newton|Sir Isaac Newton}} is the one -&quot; I'm cutting this short because it's kind of a long post. But he writes, &quot;Sir Isaac Newton is the one who so wisely noted atheism is so senseless. I will therefore try to make it a little clearer for those folks who pretend that God doesn't exist. While there is invisible gravity in space -so much for seeing is believing – this massive Earth hangs on nothing. It has no visible means of support, similar to the no means of support backing {{w|Darwinism|Darwinian evolution}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: He was wrong, but he's still right! Even though he was completely wrong. It's just unbelievable. It's astounding. He is absolutely {{w|Scientific literacy|scientifically illiterate}}. I think we could state that without fearing contradiction.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Very kind.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, he thought there was no gravity in space. You have to have absolutely no effing idea what's going on if you think that. You don't understand the first thing about physics and astronomy, right? And it's fine if somebody's not interested in science, and just doesn't have any idea about things like that, the {{w|Sherri Shepherd|Sherri Shepherds}} of the world, but he takes it a step further. In his abject ignorance of science, he uses that as a basis in order to critize ...<br /> <br /> J: To speculate! He's speculating without any ...<br /> <br /> S: No, not speculating, Jay! He's saying definitively, &quot;Hey! If the Bible isn't inspired by God, explain &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; atheists!&quot; But he's talking totally about his own complete, abject, scientific illiteracy.<br /> <br /> J: And clearly, he's unmoved, when he finds out what the truth is, like we said. No effect! Sorry! Doesn't care. That's the infuriating part of it. Okay, so, he starts off wrong. Okay, he's wrong. Then a lot of people showed him, &quot;This is what the truth is,&quot; and then he finally swallowed that, and then ... doesn't care! Didn't affect him in any way!<br /> <br /> S: Because he's not basing his beliefs on facts or logic or evidence or anything. He's {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} facts that appear to support his position. And when that's wrong, that doesn't matter! He'll just cherry pick &lt;I&gt;other&lt;/I&gt; facts. Like, he went on, &quot;Oh yeah! But gravity's invisible! So much for seeing is believing!&quot; What! It's a total {{w|Non sequitur (logic)|non sequitur}}. Even just, his interpretation of the Job passage, &quot;The Earth hangs upon nothing.&quot; That's meaningless.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> S: It doesn't even have any scientific meaning. It was written by somebody who didn't know the first thing about cosmology or physics, or astronomy.<br /> <br /> E: I liken him taking the Job quote so far out of context, this is the same way the things {{w|Nostradamus}} &quot;predicted&quot; way back when, and applying that to modern times is, there's no connection whatsoever! They have no idea basically ...<br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Feathers &lt;small&gt;(24:17)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/most-dinosaurs-may-have-had-feathers<br /> <br /> S: To finish up the news items, just two quick topics on dinosaurs. I love talking about dinosaurs. The first one has to do with how many dinosaurs probably had feathers. This has been a very fascinating story from our childhood. Rebecca, I think even you, when you were a kid, right, dinosaurs had tough, leathery skin, right? You never saw dinosaurs with feathers.<br /> <br /> But, of course, since really, {{w|Archaeopteryx}}, over a hundred years ago, the idea was that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Archeopteryx looks pretty much half dinosaur, half bird. Since then, especially since the 1980's, we've discovered a lot of feathered dinosaurs, so it wasn't just this one feathered half dinosaur, there was an entire clade, a group, of dinosaurs like {{w|Velociraptor|Velociraptors}}, et cetera, that had feathers of some type, as well as different flying dinosaurs, and other ones that had feathers but couldn't fly, and primitive birds; it's really been fleshed out tremendously.<br /> <br /> But the question remains, is how far back in the dinosaur evolutionary history do feathers go? Feathered dinosaurs are mainly found among the {{w|Theropoda|Theropods}}, which are in the branch of dinosaurs called the {{w|Saurischia|saurischians}} – which, ironically means lizard-hipped – whereas the other branch of dinosaurs, the ones that did not give rise to the birds, are the {{w|Ornithischia|ornithischians}}, which means bird-hip.<br /> <br /> B: Ha!<br /> <br /> S: But, in any case...<br /> <br /> B: How ironic is that?<br /> <br /> S: The theropods are the feathered dinosaurs. So, pretty much, at this point, we can say most theropod dinosaurs probably had feathers at some point in their life, even if it was just {{w|Down feather|downy feathers}} as young, and they may not have survived until adulthood.<br /> <br /> But recently, scientists have discovered what look like primitive feather impressions on the fossil of a neo-ornithischian dinosaur. In other words, from the other main group of dinosaurs. The common anscestor of the ornithischians and the saurichians is basically the common anscestor of all dinosaurs. Now, do you understand the implication of that?<br /> <br /> J: No!<br /> <br /> E: We have to rename dinosaurs.<br /> <br /> S: It means that all dinosaurs may have had feathers, every single dinosaur ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: It may actually go all the way back to the early days of the dinosaurs ...<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a clade.<br /> <br /> B: That's amazing. Did anybody ever even come close to even predicting this?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's incredible.<br /> <br /> B: That's fantastic.<br /> <br /> S: So, this is one fossil, I have to always say. We hate to .. you don't want to hang your hat on one piece of evidence. So, it would be nice if we could find other fossils. It's possible that these feathery filaments were only exist in a juvenile, and not adults. So, it may be that all dinosaurs had down as chicks, as baby dinosaurs, but not as adults. But still, the idea that a feather-like {{w|Integument|integumentary}} adaptation is common to most or all dinosaurs is amazing. So, if this holds up, if this turns out to be the case, that would be fascinating.<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, weren't some of the feathers ... were unique. I mean, these are feathers they had never seen before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Completely, very different structure, whatever. And also, the article, the research I read made a good comparison. They said all dinosaurs had some type of feather, just like all mammals have some type of hair, which is a nice comparison. But, they also made an interesting point. I mean, you look at an elephant - and an elephant's a mammal - not much hair going on on an elephant. There is some.<br /> <br /> So they think for the largest predators, they probably had very, very sparse feathers, if any, really, at all. Which makes sense, because they don't really need them for ...<br /> <br /> S: Temperature control.<br /> <br /> B: ... temperature control. So, I wouldn't run around thinking that, oh, {{w|Tyrannosaurus|T-Rexes}} were running around with feathers everywhere, type of thing. But who knows?<br /> <br /> S: But, it does mean that there is this potential for feather-like structures in dinosaurs as an entire clade ...<br /> <br /> B: Right.<br /> <br /> S: And think about that. So, this is getting back to the whole evidence for evolution thing. If evolution were not true, what are the odds that the group that are anatomically birds probably derived from, also had the potential ... the widespread potential to grow feather-like structures? This is exactly the kind of thing you would predict from evolution. And there's absolutely no reason for it without evolution as a unifying theory.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah. <br /> <br /> B: Steve, I know that these dinosaurs, what they found, these fossils are very special because I think they died in a lake bed, and they were very quickly covered up with a light volcanic silt, or whatever. So, that's why the resolution is so fine. But still, I can't help but thinking, &quot;You know, how many fossils have we dug up, and there was no hint of any type of feather structures on any of the big boys that all these thousands ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, for feather impressions, you need the right kind of conditions as you were saying, Bob. So this is, it may be a rare window. So, we just have to hope ... and also, this dinosaur was found outside of China, so it's the first feathered dinosaur found outside of China, which is also important. So, if we find more in various groups, and in various locations around the world. The more we find, the more evidence there is that really, all dinosaurs had some kind of potential for feathers. Or, you know, when we say, &quot;feathers,&quot; these could all just be monofilaments. They're not necessarily the fully-formed shafted feather that we ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> J: So you consider it an early feather, then, right?<br /> <br /> S: Like a downy feather, oh yeah. Or, it's also probably not on, saying, &quot;early&quot; implies that it later evolved into a bird-like feather, but it probably didn't. You know what I mean? This is in a completely separate branch. These monofilaments probably never became anything that you would think of as a feather. But it's clearly a feather-like appendage, or structure. <br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Extinction &lt;small&gt;(30:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dinosaur-extinction-revisited/<br /> <br /> S: The other dinosaur news item, this is another topic about, which I have been fascinated ever since I was a child. And that is, what wiped out the dinosaurs? Now, everybody knows the answer to this, right? What killed off the dinosaurs?<br /> <br /> R: Inability to brush their teeth, 'cause of their tiny, tiny arms.<br /> <br /> S: (Suppresses laughter) Right, exactly. The {{w|Chicxulub crater}} asteroid from 66 million years ago<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's what we said.<br /> <br /> S: at the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary. So, there's no question that 66 million years ago, a huge meteor – or a {{w|bolide}}, as they call it – whacked into the Earth at Chicxulub ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wait, Steve. Sorry, Steve. Now, bolide, isn't that a more generic term that can account for {{w|Asteroid|asteroids}} &lt;I&gt;and&lt;/I&gt; {{w|Comet|comets}}?<br /> <br /> S: Yes, because they don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, alright.<br /> <br /> S: They don't know, it was a bolide. They don't really know it was a meteor.<br /> <br /> E: And you didn't call it the K-T boundary, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: It's no longer the K-T boundary. Now it's the K-Pg extinction for {{w|Paleogene}}.<br /> <br /> J: And why didn't they send me an email when they changed that?<br /> <br /> S: I know, right? I didn't get the memo either; I just had to read it. So, anyway, it's actually more of a controversy than I was aware of until maybe a couple of years ago. I started to realize this is actually a little more controversial, that the meteor impact 66 million years ago was pretty much the main cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Paleontology|paleontologists}} are still debating among themselves whether or not dinosaurs as a group were already on the way out. One question is did the dinosaurs survive past the K-Pg boundary. I think that has been pretty much put to bed, and the answer is no. That no dinosaur survived past the K-Pg boundary. So, clearly, that is the punctuation mark at the end of dinosaurs' time on Earth. But the question is, were they already in decline, and on their way out, and was the asteroid or the bolide just the {{w|Coup de grâce|coup de grâce}}, that it was the final blow that wiped them out.<br /> <br /> B: That's the essense of the controversy right there.<br /> <br /> S: That's the controversy, that's it. Was it solely responsible, or was it just one among many factors. The other factors that paleontologists discuss are, 1, there were fluctuating sea levels at that time; 2, there was a fluctuating climate at that time in terms of the temperature of the Earth; and 3, and probably the biggest one, is the volcanism and the {{w|Deccan Traps}} located in India. They were massively volcanically active; poisoning the atmosphere, changing the climate; and that could put a lot of stress on dinosaurs and other large animals at the time.<br /> <br /> So, remember at the K-Pg extinction, all large {{w|Vertebrate}} groups, dinosaurs, {{w|Pleisiosauria|Pleisiosaurs}}, {{w|Mosasaur|mosasaurs}}, and {{w|Pterosaur|Pterosaurs}} went extinct, as did many species of {{w|Plankton}}, tropical invertebrates, and reef dwellers. So, it was a widespread extinction. {{w|Mammal|Mammals}}, birds, and insects actually did quite well. They did fine.<br /> <br /> It definitely wasn't something that was unique to dinosaurs. The reason we're talking about this now is a recent review of all existing evidence, trying to address this specific question of were the dinosaurs in decline prior to the meteor impact. And the answer to that is mostly no. A careful review of the evidence shows that there essentially is no significant scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the dinosaurs were in decline at the time the meteor hit. And, therefore, the meteor probably the primary, if not the sole cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> B: That's good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah,<br /> <br /> B: I like it.<br /> <br /> S: What you thought all along turns out to be true, and you can now comfortably ignore this controversy you didn't know about. But, the authors do hold out one tiny little exception.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god, what now?<br /> <br /> J: Oh boy!<br /> <br /> S: There was a slight decline in the species richness of North American ornithischians, but not therapods. So, there was a regional decline in one type of dinosaurs, mainly plant-eaters, the ornithischians. And they said, &quot;Maybe that made dinosaurs more vulnerable to extinction – to the collapse of their ecosystem.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, what's interesting is that that one tiny, little speculation is what the media ran with. And the headlines – even on sites that are normally very good, like {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature News}}, and the {{w|BBC}} – are reporting it as, &quot;The dinosaurs died because of bad luck.&quot; One even said that if the meteor had hit several million years earlier or later, the dinosaurs would have survived. That is &lt;I&gt;not&lt;/I&gt; what the paper concludes.<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: The paper concludes there was basically no decline in dinosaurs, and the meteor wiped them out. And then there was this one little, &quot;Yeah, okay, but the ornithischians were a little bit in decline in North America only, and maybe that made them more vulnerable. We see this pattern all the time, this ... half of what caught my interest with this story because I read the headline, I'm like, &quot;Wow! Really? That's pretty unusual.&quot; And then I read the paper, it's like, the paper's not saying this!<br /> <br /> The main evidence is not what the headlines go for. They pick out some little, tiny, little post script, but that's the thing that has the sexy headline. The dinosaurs died from bad luck! <br /> <br /> B: Holy crap!<br /> <br /> E: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> B: That's pathetic. Fail!<br /> <br /> S: Total fail. Total fail reporting this story. Just the way it gets translated is just unbelievable. And you know, it also shows, you gotta go ... if I just read the press releases, that's the impression I would have walked away with. But you got to go to the original source. You read the paper, and it's like ... I read the whole paper. Because the paper actually is fascinating.<br /> <br /> Anyone who's interested in this topic, the controversy over the extinction of the dinosaurs, this paper is an awesome primer. It goes over everything really well. And then in the discussion, it's very clear, that other than this one tiny exception, the evidence does not support any kind of general decline in dinosaurs as a group prior to the impact of the meteor.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(36:51)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> * Answer to last week: Dot Matrix Printer<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, Who's that Noisy?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, last week's Who's the Noisy, you remember this little tune? Remember this little turn? Remember this? Yeah.<br /> <br /> (Scratchy sound playing {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> S: Heh, that's awesome.<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Evan, can I ask you a question?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, sir.<br /> <br /> J: When we recorded the show last week, did I guess correctly?<br /> <br /> E: Jay, you did guess correctly. You were the first one!<br /> <br /> B: Jay, it seems so obvious now. (Laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Jay, tell us what that was!<br /> <br /> J: Tell us what you've won! That is the old {{w|Dot matrix printing|dot matrix printers}}.<br /> <br /> E: Remember those, dot matrix!<br /> <br /> J: Yes, so the drum beat is the actual feed of the paper. And then the notes, somebody figured out, I guess, a way to print different things with it, you can get different frequencies out of it.<br /> <br /> S: You could watch the whole thing on [http://youtu.be/u8I6qt_Z0Cg YouTube]<br /> <br /> J: Oh, okay. I didn't do that. I didn't cheat.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I mean, after Evan confirmed that, yes, it was a dot-matrix printer, I watched the whole thing on YouTube, and you could see what it's printing. You know, it's just dots. It's not text or anything.<br /> <br /> J: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: A dot-matrix printer?<br /> <br /> S: It does the whole song really well. It's very funny to watch.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> E: It is, and of course, you know, these things are not purposed to create music or stuff. But, hey, give people toys or technology, and they'll do all sorts of things with it that it wasn't supposed to do, though!<br /> <br /> S: They have far too much time on their hands.<br /> <br /> E: I suppose, so ...<br /> <br /> B: I love people like that! I love 'em!<br /> <br /> E: And it generated a ton of email, people having enjoyed that, realizing exactly what it was, expressing their own little comments about it, it was really cool to read. I spent a lot of time this week, 'cause there were hundreds of correct answers. But there can only be one winner each week. Rob McDermit, your name was chosen. Congratulations, you are this week's winner.<br /> <br /> And I want to send out a thank you to Liam Bond, who's also a listener, who actually sent me the link for this particular noisy, from last week. So, thank you, Liam. I appreciate that.<br /> <br /> S: Awesome. And what do you got for this week?<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this week, here's a voice you may recognize. You might not, but it's interesting nonetheless. Here we go.<br /> <br /> ?: (Male voice) I went nuts! I just didn't know what happened. I just lost it, and I just became a poor actor in New York. Like being a star student at {{w|Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT}}. I don't know. You tell me. I just ... crazy, I suppose. Swedish ... I don't know how to explain it.<br /> <br /> E: And, go ahead and submit your answer. Correct or not, we don't care. We want to hear from you. wtn@theskepticsguide.org is our email address. Or you can go ahead and post it on our forums, [http://sguforums.com sguforums.com]. Look for the sub thread called Who's that Noisy for episode 473. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, Evan.<br /> <br /> == Interview With Bill Nye &lt;small&gt;(41:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * http://billnye.com/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we recorded a really fun interview with Bill Nye the Science Guy while we were at {{w|The Amaz!ng Meeting|TAM}}. So, we're gonna play some of that interview for you now!<br /> <br /> (Music plays)<br /> <br /> S: We're here at TAM 2014, and it's our distinct pleasure to have with us back again, Bill Nye, the Science Guy! Bill, welcome back to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> BN: It's so good to be back.<br /> <br /> S: So, Bill, I asked you before we started if you wouldn't mind if we asked you about the {{w|Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate|Ham debate}}. I'm sure everyone's asking you about that. So, tell us how you feel. How did that go? Would you do it again? What do you think?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, it went great, for me, or us. I don't think I'd do it again because I don't know how much more ground there is to cover. However, I remind us that the audience is not Ken Ham, or Ken Ham's congregation, or ministry, as he calls it. The audience is everybody on the web. So, 3 and a half million views. And that's seriously, that's just in the first – what's it been – four months. It'll, I presume, just keep getting bigger and bigger.<br /> <br /> Everywhere I go, people watched it! I'm getting my shoes shined today in the {{w|McCarran International Airport|McCarran Airport}}. This guy, through a half dozen people. &quot;Loved the debate, man!&quot; People I've not dealt with yet are, &quot;I hate you! You suck!&quot; And they're coming. But I haven't met many of them yet.<br /> <br /> S: I think that – we all watched the debate, of course – I mean, we ...<br /> <br /> J: It was so cool!<br /> <br /> S: It was cool!<br /> <br /> BN: It's so nice of you guys!<br /> <br /> B: It was an event! Come on!<br /> <br /> S: I love debates. I mean, personally. A lot of people in our movement are really shy about debates, but I think they're great. So, you did a fabulous job. I think, what you did really well, to be honest with you, was you just stuck to science communicating, and you just told the science end of the spectrum really well. And I think that might have, in the end ... I think some people were worried you weren't addressing Ham's points, but he doesn't really have any points.<br /> <br /> BN: I was gonna say, what is it beyond that he's got a book?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you're better off just saying, this is the science, and isn't it cool, and let's all really be enthusiastic about science. And maybe that was actually the best approach to go.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I thought the most important thing, as I will say today many times, you may be right, if I'm not right. The most important thing is to keep your cool. Keep my cool. Because these guys say such extraordinary things. It's just ...<br /> <br /> S: Easy to lose your head.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: Bill, how did you prepare for the debate?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, that's a great question. And thank you for asking.<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> BN: So, first of all, I was overconfident. Then I got to thinking about it, and I was terrified.<br /> <br /> (Loud laughter)<br /> <br /> B: It's probably healthy.<br /> <br /> BN: Then, I went to see {{w|Eugenie Scott}}, and you guys know [http://ncse.com/users/josh Josh Rosenau]? He's the second in command there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, okay, alright.<br /> <br /> BN: He's the head of resear- he's very good. And they really coached me, along with several other people from {{w|National Center for Science Education}}.<br /> <br /> S: 'Genie's not a guy, by the way. She's here.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, and I want to see her talk! Or hear her ... Wait, I'll do both. (Rogues laugh) So she really coached me. And then, do you guys know {{w|Donald Prothero|Don Prothero}}?<br /> <br /> E: Oh, absolutely, yes. Good man.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I made good. I told him I'd buy him dinner; and I bought him dinner night before last. He really helped out. And {{w|Michael Shermer}}. We met for lunch at Michael's house, and those people really coached me. And then I did some research. I mean I spent a little time. And one thing has led to another, and I'm writing a book. I mean, I've written a book. 89,000 words. And it comes out the first week of November.<br /> <br /> J: This is about the whole experience.<br /> <br /> BN: It's about, nah, it's just called, &quot;Evolution: The Science of Creation.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ooh! That's a great title!<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, I'll show ya.<br /> <br /> E: Nice turn.<br /> <br /> BN: In my slide show – it's all about me-e-e. (Rogues laugh) I have the cover, which I got yesterday, Thursday. I got, they sent the latest version of the cover. It's a JPEG.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: So, this is really exciting, but I mention this for me, for us, we have this whole thing. We're always preaching to the choir. But don't you feel like it's growing?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, no question.<br /> <br /> S: I don't like the term &quot;preaching to the choir.&quot; We're educating people who are interested in science and critical thinking.<br /> <br /> BN: And the other thing is, this thing that we all humans are so kooky for, it's a community. That's what TAM's all about, right? Like, you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking? Wow! What a relief, right? As I say, this wouldn't matter except for kids. By kids, I mean students, science students. And that's why it's really important to me. We cannot raise a generation of students who are scientifcally illiterate, and without critical thinking skill, and so I feel that that debate really has done that. Now, a lot of people thought I shouldn't do it.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a lot of skeptics said it.<br /> <br /> E: Because there's reasons why. We've seen historical instances in which the {{w|Duane_Gish#Debates|Gish Gallop has been employed by some of these people, and they run roughshod over.<br /> <br /> BN: Let me just ask you guys, because it is all about...<br /> <br /> B: We don't deny that! We agree with you with that.<br /> <br /> BN: What did I not screw up? I mean, I did it the way I was gonna do it.<br /> <br /> S: My take was what I said already. It was one strategy to just ignore him, and just to make the case for science and evolution. That's actually a good strategy, because once you're on the defensive, you lose because he can create misconceptions in seconds that would take you dozens of minutes to correct. So just forget him.<br /> <br /> So that's one approach. It's kind of like the non-debate debate. The art of fighting without fighting.<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: So ... I also totally agree, because I get this question a lot. I'm just in the middle of a debate with a {{w|9/11 Truth movement|9/11 Truther}}. He'd be like, &quot;Why are you doing this?&quot; Like, &quot;He's not the audience! I don't care about him. I am talking to people who want information, who are on the fence who will be helped by this. And I'm gonna teach them some critical thinking and facts!<br /> <br /> BN: Or just the doubt's introduced to their minds. That's the big thing.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, the one thing our listeners will be very upset about if we don't bring this up, though. The one criticism that does come up is, &quot;But Ham exploited this to raise money for his ...&quot;<br /> <br /> BN: Here's my claim.<br /> <br /> S: You tell me.<br /> <br /> BN: It's not over yet.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> BN: So, he held an online press conference. I don't know if you guys watched that.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't.<br /> <br /> BN: And there's no members of the press at a press conference in {{w|Answers in Genesis}}, it's all their own guys.<br /> <br /> B: Is that afterwards, or before?<br /> <br /> BN: Afterwards, weeks later. So, two things. I got a letter saying that the debate did not influence it at all from a Mark Looy, who's second in command at Answers in ... maybe he's actually the head of Answers in Genesis. And saying it had no influence at all. And then they had this press conference saying it was the wind that blew ... but journalists in {{w|Kentucky}} are looking hard into this. They're trying to follow the money. And I have heard two people who've looked at the {{w|Irs_tax_forms#Fiduciary_reporting|990's}}, you know what I mean?<br /> <br /> Now, this is hearsay, you guys, this is the worst form of evidence. But he may – and this is may, not verified yet, they are trying to find out – but he may have leveraged the loan for the Arc Park against the {{w|Creation Museum}}, and you know, his attendance is going down.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: Because it's generally believed that his attendance is going down because he doesn't have new exhibits. This is in museum talk. So, what I did, you guys, I didn't give money to (inaudible), but I took the money from the debate, and I gave it to a planetary society.<br /> <br /> E: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: And I also gave it to the Kentucky Museum of Science, or maybe it's called {{w|Kentucky Science Center|Kentucky Children's Museum}}, and the {{w|Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal|Cincinnati Museum of Science}}. You know, trying to bracket him. So, it's not ... in other words, I will say, in the short term, you may be right. But in the medium term, I think he's gonna have a lot of trouble.<br /> <br /> E: The final reckoning is not in yet.<br /> <br /> BN: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's only June of the first few months, people!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> S: That's long though, attention span, for the public.<br /> <br /> BN: What'd you say? I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Gotcha for a second.<br /> <br /> BN: Hilarious!<br /> <br /> J: My only critique, is that you could have structured the debate to handle one or two topics, and had a moderator keep people on topic, which ... but I totally agree with Steve. After watching the debate, we were ... definitely more than once, you did such a good job, of just being ...<br /> <br /> E: Love you man!<br /> <br /> J: Well, you insulated yourself! You were immune to him just going off on these insane tangents <br /> <br /> BN: He was galloping gishy wash.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: He was trying, he tried. But overall, I just had a conversation with people an hour ago about this. What was the net result? I'm not sure. I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: It's hard to measure, but ...<br /> <br /> J: It is hard to measure.<br /> <br /> S: I certainly think I encountered a lot of people who like, excited about science because I saw you on that debate.<br /> <br /> BN: That's so nice!<br /> <br /> S: That's a win!<br /> <br /> BN: I've met several science teachers, and of course, this is a self-selecting group, who use it in class. They say they've played it in class, this spring.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> BN: Wow, yeah. That was not the plan. Cool.<br /> <br /> B: Have you guys seen ... they had pictures of people holding up these goofy questions. I think they were people that were actually at the event, and they wrote questions, trying to explain, &quot;Hey, Bill! What do you say about &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; type of thing.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio 22 Questions for Bill Nye]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: If we're descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ...<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> B: Right, that's a perfect example!<br /> <br /> BN: What purpose to monkeys serve, exactly?<br /> <br /> B: So, there was a lot of those pictures, and a lot of websites have been created showing what those people said, and then having somebody else hold another card responding to it, and they were just beautiful lessons on how to deal with ... I know, but it came out of it, and it's just one of the things that I just loved reading and making them look so ridiculous.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.businessinsider.com/22-responses-to-buzzfeeds-22-messages-from-creationists-2014-2 22 Answers for creationists]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: To us. But to his followers ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Oh yeah. But, so what? Like you said, you didn't convert anyone.<br /> <br /> S: They were all gotcha questions. They were gotcha questions that reveal they don't know anything about the science of evolution.<br /> <br /> BN: It's troubling, because we're the most technologically advanced society – you could say Japan – Finland is very, actually, New Zealand is very good. But this is where the iPhone's designed, right? And yet, we have these people in our midst that have no understanding of where an iPhone comes from, for example.<br /> <br /> J: Or don't even care to question it.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah. So that's why we got ... and the big thing, you guys, for me, the critical issues are climate change and the future of science education, and engineers. So, Ken Ham denies climate change. I mean, that's one of his things. He's doing all he can to indoctrinate young people in that area, Kentucky, mostly.<br /> <br /> E: He may see an income stream from going that approach too. A new revenue stream, yeah, by appealing to the people who deny that climate change is happening.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I'm sure that they're the same people. I mean, if you were scientifcally aware, you wouldn't ... I don't think you'd give Answers in Genesis any money, would you?<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Probably not.<br /> <br /> B: But speaking of climate change, I saw you on {{w|Last Week Tonight with John Oliver|John Oliver's show}}.<br /> <br /> BN: That was big fun.<br /> <br /> B: And that was fantastic! I just loved it because none of the people actually stress that point, that you can't have the scientific position here, and then a denier here, when there's ... the {{w|false balance}} is ridiculous. And he just brought, like, what, 97 scientists on.<br /> <br /> BN: 96. So I was 97.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, but they were all speaking in this caucophany.<br /> <br /> BN: I just noticed, you guys, what a great thing it was. It's {{w|Mother's Day}}, alright? And these are actors. &quot;Sure! I'll be an extra on Mother's Day. Sure, okay.&quot; (Rogues laugh) Just shows ya, it's a tough business. But everybody was really cool, really gracious, and people were excitied to participate. John Oliver's really come into his own.<br /> <br /> B: Really!<br /> <br /> E: Oh boy.<br /> <br /> B: He's been nailing it on his show.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, humor's a great vehicle for exposing nonsense.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, this business of irony. And there are books written about the nature of laughter, and what you find ironic. And you'll be shocked to learn that what Michael Shermer calls &quot;socially liberal,&quot; - is that what he says? Or is it liberal social? Socially liberal people have a much more highly developed sense of irony. And this is from brain scans. I didn't ... not my thing!<br /> <br /> E: It's not my thing, it's a fact!<br /> <br /> BN: I've been reading this book, &quot;[http://www.amazon.com/Ha-The-Science-When-Laugh/dp/product-description/0465031706 Ha]!&quot; about the nature of laughter, and it's really fascinating.<br /> <br /> J: So, Bill, tell us about the things that you're doing with the government to help affect change.<br /> <br /> BN: The government? Well, just when the White House calls, I show up.<br /> <br /> S: You've got the red phone? The hotline?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, sort of. You may not know, but there's something called the {{w|Office of Science and Technology Policy}}. Somewhat disclosure – a guy who works there was a grad student under the guy who started the Space Policy Institute. So, he'll call me, or text me. Or he'll have somebody call me or text me. And if the President asked you to come to the {{w|White House}} science fair, you show up, sorry man.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;{{w|Maker Faire}}&quot;, a few weeks ago, and that was cool. These people make kooky stuff in order, or learning the technology, developing the technology that allows us to make things that were not possible to make. You know, I'm a mechanical engineer, and now we're all into {{w|3D printing|additive manufacturing}}, have you heard this expression?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: There didn't use to be any such thing. There was {{w|lost-wax casting}}.<br /> <br /> E: Right<br /> <br /> BN: Or was, there still is ... and moulding, and stuff. And that's in a sense, additive manufacturing, but not like printing rocket engine nozzels.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, right?<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> J: I know, tell me about it.<br /> <br /> E: Exciting.<br /> <br /> J: I can't believe that.<br /> <br /> BN: It's cool. It's exciting. <br /> <br /> S: How involved are you, at all, as a planetary society, with the Dragon, or other ...<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, so {{w|Elon Musk}} was on our board for many years, or a few years, but he had to recuse himself when he got the government contract for commercial crewed space flight. {{w|SpaceX}} has gotten, this is my memory, but it's right around $500 million, right around half a billion dollars from NASA. And so has Sierra Nevada Space, and another one.<br /> <br /> J: The {{w|Orion (spacecraft)|Orion}}?<br /> <br /> BN: The Orion! Yeah, {{w|Boeing}} has also gotten money. So, the Orion, everybody, is a compromise. But that's the nature of politics.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think? What's the bottom line? What's your feeling about the Orion? Is that gonna be a useful addition, or is it gonna be a wasteful boondoggle, or somewhere in between?<br /> <br /> BN: I'm on camera, right? We are hopeful that it's very successful.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> S: (Quiet) Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: No, you guys, you can go to {{w|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station|Cape Canaveral}}, and there is the constellation gantry tower. You know what I mean by this? This thing that holds up a rocket, that was never built because it was underfunded from the get-go, and people presumed, as has happened so often in that past, that once you've got a program started, people will just keep it going no matter what. Space man, this is America. This is what we're gonna do.<br /> <br /> But after a while, somebody said, &quot;Wait, you're way off in your budget. You're just too far off.&quot; And Orion's what's left over from that.<br /> <br /> J: And it's actually derivative of a few different attempts, right?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, everybody, it's fairly popular when you run for President, if you guys go that route, to say we're gonna go to the {{w|Moon}}. It's really popular to say we're gonna go to {{w|Mars}}. But the scale of it, as this guy we work with – we have a lobbyist at the Planetary Society. He says these people in {{w|United States Congress|Congress}} think it's {{w|Pepsi}} or {{w|Coca-Cola|Coke}}, the Moon or Mars.<br /> <br /> No, one's three days, the other is three years. Keeping people alive for three years in deep space with radioation, with no gravity, it's just not so trivial. Not so easy.<br /> <br /> E: All kinds of problems.<br /> <br /> J: Keeping them from going crazy in a spaceship for three years is a challenge.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I didn't write this joke; it was told to me by Congressman {{w|Adam Schiff}}, who, his district used to include JPL,{{w|Jet Propulsion Laboratory| Jet Propulsion Lab}}. Now it doesn't, it's {{w|Judy Chu}}, but now, it still includes {{w|California Institute of Technology|Caltech}}, so he's in that {{w|Pasadena, California|Pasedena}} space community.<br /> <br /> Alright, so they send this mission to Mars that's auto-return. What's it called, Mars Frontier? Anyway, it's a husband and wife that are of an age where they can no longer have children. So they fly out – and this will be possible in the year 2018. There's an automatic return if you get the trajectory just so, the orbit of Mars will sling you right back to Earth. So, you won't land, you'll just woo-o-o, come back. Take pictures, and I guess we (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> So, in the context of this joke, gentlemen, the spacecraft and everything's going well, but on the way back, suddenly there's no communication. There's no words from the thing. It automatically gets in orbit around the Earth, no communication. They go up with another spacecraft, and look in the window, and both the husband and wife have been dismembered, been torn limb from limb. How is this possible? And then, Adam Schiff says, &quot;Well, you've never been married.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, to your point, this is a very serious concern. 400 days with the same people in a room as big as this table. There's some trouble.<br /> <br /> E: People are still people.<br /> <br /> B: To me, the biggest problem is the radiation that you would encounter. No one has any .. is anyone addressing that?<br /> <br /> BN: Yep, well people<br /> <br /> B: Is it a deal breaker?<br /> <br /> BN: ... argue the radiation is not that strong.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> BN: But I'm not sure that's true. And so, by the way, changing it back to ... and the Planetary Society, we hope, again, to launch, to fly, this thing called the {{w|Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment}}. Did you hear about that? LIFE? So, it's a titanium puck with several microbes that are very well characterized and purified, and properly freeze-dried, and some water bears, the {{w|Tardigrade|tardigrades}}.<br /> <br /> B: Tardigrades, they're awesome! They're incredible.<br /> <br /> E: Good innovation!<br /> <br /> J: You're gonna see if they're gonna die?<br /> <br /> BN: I can't see under the table? And then we'd send them, we were gonna send them to Phobos and back, the moon of Mars. But, it crashed. It was a Russian rocket. {{w|Fobos Grunt}}, it was called. Grunt is Russian, my understanding, is Russian for soil. Anyway, it was gonna scoop up some {{w|Phobos (moon)|Phobos}}, but it crashed in the {{w|Pacific Ocean}}.<br /> <br /> So, we might get a chance to fly that again. And, to your point, we'll see if they can take this radiation. Then, presumably, they'd come back, and we'd light 'em up again, put warm water on them and see what happens. So, what are the questions? Do you know radiodurans?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Deinococcus radiodurans|Radiodurans}}! {{w|Extremophile}}! Right? It's my favourite {{w|microorganism}}.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, way to go.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, why does that bacterium have the capability to withstand radiation? This is a cool, evolutionary ...<br /> <br /> J: Does it absorb it?<br /> <br /> B: No, it blows apart the {{w|DNA}}, and it can reform. It's amazing stuff. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: It's also partly that it's simplified its DNA as much as possible, so there are fewer opportunities for it being destroyed.<br /> <br /> BN: No, but here's the thing. Here's what we love to be charmed by in {{w|astrobiology}}, not quite science fiction, thinking out louding, is maybe Mars was hit by an impactor 3 billion years ago. A living thing got into space on a meteorite before it became a meteorite, and just in 17,000 quick years, in a home in orbit, it made its way to the Earth, and we are all ...<br /> <br /> E: So we are all Martians.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Panspermia}}, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's just a cool thing to wonder about, and it's a wonderful thing to investigate. We have the capability. This generation of people, to send the right spacecraft there and look into that question more carefully. I mean, if we were to discover evidence of life on Mars, it would change the world!<br /> <br /> J: Say it.<br /> <br /> E: (Accent) Change the world!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:03:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Item #1]: A recently published analysis indicates that, if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20-40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> [http://blogs.chapman.edu/press-room/2014/07/23/the-quantum-cheshire-cat-can-a-particle-be-separated-from-its-properties/ Item #2]: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself, so the particle was in one location while its magnetic moment was in another.<br /> [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uoia-pun072814.php Item #3]: Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity, in an indium alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real, and one fake. Then I ask my expert skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Are you guys ready for this week?<br /> <br /> R: We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah. As ready as last week.<br /> <br /> S: Nah, there's no real theme this week.<br /> <br /> R: Ah, okay.<br /> <br /> S: No theme. Okay, here we go: Item #1: A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 – 40% of the world will have serious {{w|Water scarcity|water shortage}} by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> <br /> Item #2: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So the particle was in one location while its {{w|magnetic moment}} was in another. And Item #3: Researchers have successfully created {{w|Cooper pair|Cooper pairs}}, the hallmark of {{w|superconductivity}} in an {{w|Indium}} alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: You heard him.<br /> <br /> R: Why couldn't there have been a theme, and the theme was {{w|Cheetah|cheetahs}}, or {{w|Sloth|sloths}}?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, cuddly animals or ...<br /> <br /> R: Instead, the theme is shit Rebecca doesn't know! Again! I'm getting sick of this, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Things that go meow.<br /> <br /> B: I don't mind!<br /> <br /> R: Ugh! Bob, go first.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Bob is going last. Evan, you go first.<br /> <br /> R: Ugh!<br /> <br /> E: Okay. Steve, I'm gonna start with the first one, in which you wrote, &quot;A recently published analysis indicates that blah, blah, blah,&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> S: Yada yada<br /> <br /> E: If we continue our current mix of electricity generation, okay, I buy that. 20 – 40% of the world will have serious water shortage! Okay, why is that? By 2020? And there'll be a global water shortage by 2040? I don't know. This smacks of other things we've kind of heard about in the past, in which these sorts of predictions are made, and they don't always turn out to, I think, be as serious as this. That's not to say it's not a serious issue, but these things tend to get I think, overestimated, and maybe a little over hyped. I don't know if that's one of these.<br /> <br /> Well, moving on to the second one, &quot;Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle.&quot; That's mind boggling, frankly. I don't think there's any other way to put it. Particle was in one location. It's magnetic moment (laughs) was in another. Oh, I've never heard that term, &quot;Magnetic moment,&quot; before.<br /> <br /> J: I know! I thought that was odd.<br /> <br /> B: Where you been?<br /> <br /> E: What? Magnetic moment?<br /> <br /> R: I'm really glad he said that, because I assumed I was the only person who didn't know.<br /> <br /> E: Bob, tell me one time that those words have ever been spoken like that on this show. I can't remember a single time. We've never talked about the magnetic moment of particles, never!<br /> <br /> B: You know, I bet I've mentioned it a couple times in the last 470 episodes.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I bet he has.<br /> <br /> E: Some listener will correct me on that if it's out there, but I frankly, I don't remember.<br /> <br /> B: Frankly, I forget what we talk about last week, dude. Come on.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this is too wild, I think, to not be true. Why the hell, Steve, would you throw this in here? This is, you're really trying to trip us up here. And how they've done it, who the hell knows? High speed collisions, you know? Whatever.<br /> <br /> The last one, researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs. An indium alloy at near room temperature. &lt;I&gt;In&lt;/I&gt; an indium alloy at near room temperature. Okay. Indium, huh? So, basically, have we actually hit the gold standard here.<br /> <br /> S: The holy grail.<br /> <br /> E: Well, I mean, is this some sort of ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Cold fusion}}?<br /> <br /> E: ... what were we talking about. Cold fusion! Thank you. Kind of thing. It's kid of what we're talking about 'cause of the whole room temperature thing. That seems to be very, very ... I'll go with my gut and say that I think the water shortage one is the fiction. I think there's some merit to it, there's something going on. I think that those estimates are too soon though. We may have a serious problem maybe a hundred years from now, but not 5, 8, one generation from now. I think that's an exaggeration. So, that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Jay.<br /> <br /> J: Okay, this first one, very smart, Steve. This first one about the water, the water shortage. I've read quite a bit about that. I've heard about it. I think I've seen a TV show about the water shortage claims that are coming, and a lot of this hype about, are we shipping all of our water to China, and everything? I don't know.<br /> <br /> I do think though, that there may be some truth in this, but I'm not quite sure that this news item itself is completely true. It seems plausible that we could have water shortages. I just don't know, Steve, the connection here with electricity. I'm a little confused about.<br /> <br /> Okay, the second one about the particle being separated from its magnetic moment. I kind of agree with Evan. It's an oddball item, and it seems to be either that they tried to do it, and they couldn't do it. I just don't see a good fake here.<br /> <br /> This last one, however, I would think that if this happened, the way that Steve is saying it, that there'd be nothing preventing my browser from exploding in my face with news items coming up about room temperature superconductivity. So I'm gonna say that the third one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's where I was leaning. The only one of these that I can even really parse is the one about electricity generation and water shortage. And yeah, I do know that there is a connection between those two. I think that it's because nuclear power plants and coal plants too, maybe, require a lot of water for cooling. That one makes sense to me, and, yeah, global water shortage by 2040, that can mean a lot of things. It's kind of vague, what kind of shortage are we talking about? We obviously already have problems with droughts and stuff in parts of the United States, but also, we fly drinking water from Fiji into our Starbucks. So ...<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah! {{w|Fiji}} water? Do you not know about Fiji water? Fiji water literally takes the only potable water in Fiji, and leaves the residents to drink sewage water. Fun times. So (Laughs) yeah. Global water shortage, okay, probably something that majorly affects the developing nations more, but yeah.<br /> <br /> So, I'm going between the other two. I don't know what a magnetic moment is. I assumed it's something like it's position, in space or something. I don't know. Why not? But yeah, the room temperature thing. I was wondering if it was something like cold fusion-esque, and Evan and Jay seem to think so. And so, I think, yeah. If that's what this has to do with, then, yeah, I find that the least believable. So I'm going to go with the Cooper pairs at room temperature being the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: A-a-and, Bob.<br /> <br /> B: Alright, the water shortage, these numbers seem a little dramatic to me. I always heard it's coming. 20 – 40%! You know, 6 years, potentially? Seri ... and 2040 ... what is a global water shortage? How extensive? How global would that be? But I don't have huge problems with that.<br /> <br /> The second one, yeah, {{w|quantum mechanics}} is crazy! Absolutely, I totally buy this. I mean, you talking about things like {{w|Quantum entanglement|entanglement}} and {{w|Quantum superposition|superposition}}, yeah, I could totally see this. It's a little surprising to me, but you gotta just learn to roll with quantum mechanics, unless of course, the claims are pseudoscientific. But, so yeah, that one doesn't surprise me. I really, really hope that's true, 'cause that's fantastic.<br /> <br /> Yeah, I got a problem with the third one. Cooper pairs, come on. Room temperature? No. We're not there yet. And I have to agree with Jay that this would be all over. This would be huge. That's the holy grail, right there! Room temperature. Bet they didn't think of that one!<br /> <br /> I remember first hearing about high temperature superconductivity back, what Steve, '90's? Early '90's? No, late '80's maybe.<br /> <br /> S: Something like that.<br /> <br /> B: And I'm thinking, &quot;Oh boy!&quot; You know, and now, twenty-something, thirty years later, it's still mysterious. So, yeah, I'm just not buying that we've got that yet. I mean, I really hope I'm wrong on this one, but I severely doubt it, so that's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, well, you all agree with #2, so let's start there. Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So, the particle was in one place, while it's magnetic moment was in another. You guys all think this one is science ...<br /> <br /> R: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: and this one is ... So you guys don't know what a magnetic moment is?<br /> <br /> R: Well, Bob ... I <br /> <br /> J: I know what it is!<br /> <br /> E: It's when you look across the room, and you stare at that special person in the eyes, and you have a connection that you can't quite explain.<br /> <br /> R: (Singing) This magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so the magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantitiy that determines the torque-able experienced in an external {{w|magnetic field}}.<br /> <br /> B: You are correct, sir!<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, it's basically a propery of the magnetic, it's own magnetism, think about it that way. A bar {{w|magnet}}, an {{w|electron}}, a {{w|molecule}}, and a {{w|planet}} all have magnetic moments. And apparently, so do {{w|neutrons}}. This one is science. And Bob's right. That wacky quantum mechanics can do anything, apparently.<br /> <br /> B: Almost.<br /> <br /> S: Very ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Deus ex machina}} of Science or Fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: So, what the scientists did was they used a neutron {{w|Interferometry|interferometer}}. Ever hear of that, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you take a beam of neutrons, you split them into two paths, or the neutrons could basically take one of two ...<br /> <br /> J: The two paths, I know.<br /> <br /> B: What?<br /> <br /> J: You actually described it pretty well, Steve. Now, taking that to the next step though, when you decouple these {{w|Electric power conversion|power converters}} ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: and you cross phase them through the actual early, early {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} converter type systems.<br /> <br /> B: (Snickering) Java ...<br /> <br /> J: What you get is a semi crossed {{w|Parallax|paralaxed}} {{w|Paralysis|paralyzation}} of the {{w|Coma|comatose}} {{w|Crematory|cremators}}.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Did you get the power converters at {{w|Hitachi station}}?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Technobabble}}!<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now, what really happened was, you could send this beam of neutrons simultaneously down two paths! This is standard quantium mechanics, right?<br /> <br /> J: Are you saying there's two paths you can go down, but in the long run, it's not too late to change the road you're on?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct, because the neutrons can decide later if they went down Path A, or Path B, right? They go down both simultaneously until they interact with something, then they have to choose the path. That's standard quantum mechanics. But what they were able to do in this experiment was by aligning the magnetic moments of the two streams, and then selecting for one stream, they could select for neutrons that had to go through one path. Does that make sense? They basically filtered out one of the two paths.<br /> <br /> So now they have, even though those streams came together again, they could select out the neutrons that chose Path A, and filter out all the neutrons that chose Path B. But at the same time, they could also align the magnetic moment of the neutrons, and they did it differently for the two paths. And what they were able to show was that the neutrons at the other end went down Path A, but their magnetic moment essentially went down Path B. Does that make sense?<br /> <br /> E: Uh ...<br /> <br /> B: That's sweet as hell, man.<br /> <br /> E: Sure!<br /> <br /> B: I love quantum mechanics.<br /> <br /> S: So, they separated the particle from its own magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's ...<br /> <br /> B: I love it!<br /> <br /> S: Crazy quantum mechanics. Alright, so that one is science. So, I guess we'll go on to #3. Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity in an indium alloy at near room temperature. Bob, Jay, and Rebecca think this one is fiction. Evan thinks this one is science. And this one is ... so you guys are all assuming that creating Cooper pairs ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god.<br /> <br /> S: ... is equal to superconductivity.<br /> <br /> R: Look, I don't know, Steve.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I am!<br /> <br /> S: What if they were able to create Cooper pairs even though the material itself wasn't superconducting? Bob, you know what Cooper pairs are.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, the electrons get bound together, and they can just slide through, and not be disturbed by any part of the material. It's one of the hallmarks of a special class of superconductivity, but, yeah, technically, you're right. And if it's true, I'm gonna kill you.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Well ...<br /> <br /> E: On his birthday?<br /> <br /> S: It is technically correct, but this one is the fiction!<br /> <br /> R: Hurray!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: So ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! I got one right!<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Cooper pairs are basically superconductivity. But, this is based on a real item. I always get a chuckle when you guys say, &quot;How could Steve think of this?&quot; Well, I'm not making stuff up. I'm always basing it off of some item. I'm just tweaking.<br /> <br /> B: He's not that creative!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I don't have to be that creative, yeah. What this ... the item basically is just physicists understanding a little bit better, the nature of superconductivity. And the hope is that one day, one magical day, they'll use this knowledge in order to be able to finally get the &quot;holy grail,&quot; and make room temperature superconductors. But, yeah, they have not created anything. They just were able to, make some further investigation to sort of further understanding essentially the quantum glue that holds these Cooper pairs together. That was the breakthrough.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. But they did use indium; So, I pulled that out of there. Indium, by the way, indium is an element. It is atomic #49. It is a metal. It's a soft metal with a fairly low melting point. It's chemically similar to {{w|gallium}} and {{w|thallium}}, indium. Pretty cool.<br /> <br /> E: It sounds like two dwarves from {{w|The Lord of the Rings|Lord of the Rings}}.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> B: Gallium! Thalium!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Right, okay, let's go on to #1. A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 to 40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040 is ... science. Doesn't mean this is going to come ...<br /> <br /> R: Hooray for water scarcity!<br /> <br /> S: So, the connection, as Rebecca said, is we need to use a lot of water to cool these power generators. Whether it's nuclear, or it's coal, or whatever. You can't let them overheat. A lot of power plants don't really track how much water they're using. So the authors are saying this is a problem. We need to more carefully track this.<br /> <br /> R: Really? Jeez.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, and what they mean by a water shortage is that you will essentially have to choose between power generation and drinking water, that we won't have enough to do both.<br /> <br /> E: Hrmm...<br /> <br /> S: By 2040 – which doesn't sound that far in the future when you think about it -<br /> <br /> E: A generation.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that the entire world will be experiencing this water shortage if we are meeting our electricity needs at that time with our current mix of power generation. So, what's the solution? Well, they make a number of recommendations. Improve energy efficiency; better research on alternative cooling cycles; researching on how much water power plants use; massive investments in wind and solar, because wind and solar don't use a lot of water; and abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water stressed places, which is, they say, half the planet, because that's what uses the most water to make electricity.<br /> <br /> So, yeah, pretty frightening extrapolation, but of course, it's one study, this is &lt;I&gt;their&lt;/I&gt; analysis. These are always difficult. There's a lot of moving parts, you know.<br /> <br /> E: That's why I thought it wasn't science, you know.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you know. I just said, it's a published analysis that indicates this. I thought you could believe it or not believe it. But any single analysis like this, like, &quot;We're reaching {{w|peak oil}}!&quot; Any of those, you always got to take them with a grain of salt because, you know, you leave out one factor, and it can change the whole outcome, you know? So, it's very tricky. And I'd like to see that there's a consensus, that multiple independant analyses are overlapping, coming to the same conclusion. So ... but it definitely is one more reason that even if their projections are overly grim, it's one more reason to get off fossil fuels, and to make, as Bob suggests, a massive investment in at least solar energy. So, there you have it. Good job, guys!<br /> <br /> J: Thank you!<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, except Evan.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you!<br /> <br /> == Announcements: &lt;small&gt;(1:20:33)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Jay, before we get to the quote, I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, I want to give a very sincere thank you to everyone who has donated to our legal defence fund. We are already, we've covered about 60% of the legal expenses that we have made so far. So, we have covered a huge chunk of our legal expenses with the donations.<br /> <br /> Obviously, we can't know ahead of time what the ultimate costs are gonna be. I have estimates from my lawyer, and it's a lot. You know, it's probably gonna be somewhere between 60 and 70,000 dollars if the thing goes the distance. So, we do have a ways to go before we got there. But, in just one week, there has been an incredible outpouring of support for the SGU, for our defence against this lawsuit, and of course, people donating to support our defence, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it.<br /> <br /> We also wanted to point out that the SGU, always looking to expand our activity, has a new webpage on our SGU homepage, the Science News page. So, if you go to [http://www.theskepticsguide.org theskepticsguide.org], and you click on the science news banner, you will see that we're putting up about two to three news items per day. We're going to be expanding it, but we're selecting items that are like, the coolest news items of the day. And Evan is doing some reviews of ... Evan has got, you've got two that you're doing. Why don't you describe them really quick for us, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, thanks, Steve. So, I am doing two reviews, like, you said. One is ... I call it the SGU Cutting Room Floor. So, these are some items that we would have loved to have gotten to on the last episode of the show, but just didn't have the time. There's always more items than we have time for. And then the other one is called the Top 5 Ridiculous Comments of the Week. So, I scour the internet, looking for people making all sorts of ridiculous comments on all sorts of different things, and I try to condense that down to the top 5 each week. So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yep, and we're adding some special segments. We have a Weird, Wildlife Wednesday segment that we're putting out. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/author/kate Kate Christian] is doing that for us. Kate's really been helpf7ul with all of our social media efforts. So, I'd like to thank her as well for helping us get this going. And send us, if you have any ideas for science news bits you'd like to see on the Science News page, let us know. We're always looking to expand the content that we're putting there.<br /> <br /> And, of course, all of this is interfacing with our Facebook page, which we have been extremely active on as well. So, if you haven't checked out our Facebook page recently, check it out. Check out our Science News page. Send us ideas for stuff you'd like to see there.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:23:14)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;“I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.”-Lawrence M. Krauss&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, give us the quote.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;I hope that every person at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.” (Shouting) {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}}!<br /> <br /> S: I like that! I like that. It's a very good quote. It is a good, sobering, humbling experience to have something you firmly believe be proven completely and utterly wrong.<br /> <br /> J: That was sent in by a listener named, Brendan Shwass, from New Zealand. Brendan, we're fully expecting to meet you in person when we will be in New Zealand, I think, what is that, the first week of December?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me this week, everyone.<br /> <br /> B: Sure, Steve.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> R: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you guys.<br /> <br /> R: What a better way to spend your birthday.<br /> <br /> J: I love you.<br /> <br /> E: Hey, happy birthda-a-ay!<br /> <br /> J: You're one of the best people I know, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you brotha. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> Before Greenwich got Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude, used by sailors.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Prime meridian (Greenwich)|Zero Longitude}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> All batteries need to have three things in order to work: An electrolite, an anode, and a cathode.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Battery (electricity)|Battery components}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The KT extinction boundary has been renamed the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary.<br /> <br /> Humanity is headed for a global water shortage&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Looming water shortage]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y<br /> |General Science = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> |SGU = y<br /> |Technology = y}}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_473&diff=9570 2015-01-17T06:42:48Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Dinosaur Extinction (30:28) */ Dinosaur spelling corrections.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 473<br /> |episodeDate = August 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Fluffydinosaur1.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |rebecca = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = BN: {{w|Bill Nye}}<br /> |guest2 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no second guest --&gt;<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-02.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44275.0.html<br /> |qowText = I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey everybody<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys.<br /> <br /> S: And Evan Bernstein<br /> <br /> E: Steve, did you say it's July 29th?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct!<br /> <br /> E: As in July 29th, 1964?<br /> <br /> S: 1964?<br /> <br /> E: 50 years ago, to the day, er...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, well, this day in Skepticism, Steve Novella was born!<br /> <br /> (Rogues cheer)<br /> <br /> J: That's actually relevant too! That's really cool! Happy birthday, brother!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you so much.<br /> <br /> E: Happy birthday.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. I'm 50.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel?<br /> <br /> S: The big 5 – 0<br /> <br /> J: Holy crap.<br /> <br /> S: The Y-5-0<br /> <br /> B: Oh mother ....<br /> <br /> S: Four bits.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel? Do you feel different?<br /> <br /> S: Half a century.<br /> <br /> R: Have you bought a sports car?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, no, I'm way past my midlife crisis already.<br /> <br /> R: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: I decided to start a podcast for my midlife crisis.<br /> <br /> R: That's sad.<br /> <br /> E: Look what it's gotten you.<br /> B: You freak.<br /> <br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:11)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 2, 1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by Parliament.<br /> <br /> R: Well, you know what, you share a birthday with {{w|Greenwich Mean Time}}! Did you know that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Is that right?<br /> <br /> R: Yah!<br /> <br /> E: Awesome!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (British accent) Greenwich Mean Time, I say.<br /> <br /> R: Well, oh, wait. No, you don't, because this was August 2nd, the day this podcast comes out.<br /> <br /> B: Psyche!<br /> <br /> R: Sorry ...<br /> <br /> S: Close.<br /> <br /> E: In podcast land, you share, but not in real life.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Well, there goes my big segue. Anyway, in 1880, on August 2nd, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by the {{w|Parliament of the United Kingdom|UK Parliament}}. Which is, it's always weird to me when I think about time suddenly coming into existence. (Laughs) I mean, obviously, time has always existed, because it always requires time.<br /> <br /> E: Oh!<br /> <br /> R: (Laughs) But for a long time, each town would have it's own, particular time; and there was really no desperate need to make sure that they were all coordinated but once ...<br /> <br /> B: Train schedules!<br /> <br /> R: Train schedules were one thing, but the reason why Greenwich Mean Time was adopted when it was, was apparently more for naval navigation, and it was only standardized and used across Europe once train transportation increased. And then it wasn't until three years after it was officially adopted that the United States adopted it as well. And that was when telegraph lines first started transmitting (inaudible) &lt;!type?&gt; signals to all the cities.<br /> <br /> B: Ah-h-h...<br /> <br /> R: So, yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Cool.<br /> <br /> R: And it was adopted worldwide, November 1st, 1884.<br /> <br /> J: Cool! Very cool!<br /> <br /> R: And then there was time.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, before Greenwich was Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude. So, when sailors – as you said – sailors would set their clocks to Greenwich Time, because then they would estimate their longitude by how far they were from Greenwich, basically. Based upon, &quot;Oh, it's noon! And the sun is two hours past being directly overhead. So I must be two hours past zero longitude.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> J: (British accent) There you have it.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Mike Adams Follow Up &lt;small&gt;(3:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/07/28/fbi-turns-up-heat-on-mike-adams-as-health-ranger-fiasco-widens-plus-adams-archive/<br /> <br /> S: So, Jay, you're gonna give us a quick follow up on the whole {{w|NaturalNews|Mike Adams}} hubbub from last week.<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Ugh.<br /> <br /> S: Things are happening so fast we actually missed some important updates when we recorded the last show.<br /> <br /> J: Well, yeah, the quick summary is that Mike wrote a blog post where he compares people that support or are neutral about {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMOs}} to the {{w|Nazi Germany|Nazi regime}} and, in essence, put out a death threat against anybody that supports GMOs, saying that good people – who are anti-GMO – should kill people who are pro-GMO. And he riddled his blog post with pictures of {{w|Adolf Hitler|Hitler}}, and the Nazi party, and all the terrible things that they did, using that as ...<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Swastika#As_the_symbol_of_Nazism|Swastikas}}.<br /> <br /> J: yeah, swastikas, everything, using it as a way to convince his readers that they need to take action. Now, the big thing that he did, also, was that he requested that someone make a website that lists the offending parties, people that support GMO. And Steve, and {{w|David Gorski}}, and a ton of other journalists and news outlets were listed on this website. And then things got stranger.<br /> <br /> If that blog post wasn't strange and horrible enough, the update is that now the {{w|Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI}} is really turning up the heat on Mike, and they're investigating him. And some legitimate proof has come down the pike through web forensics that Mike is actually the person who created the listing website. Let me give you the details behind that.<br /> <br /> Now keep in mind, he supposedly requested during his blog, in the middle of his blog, for someone to create this website. Wouldn't it be convenient if somebody created this list of people that we can mark as our enemies, the big supporters of GMO, the big offenders. The &quot;people that should be killed,&quot; right? Then this website pops up very soon after, and Mike updates his blog saying, &quot;and here's a link to the website that some reader of my blog created.&quot;<br /> <br /> Turns out, Mike is that reader. It turns out that that website was created a short while before Mike actually posted his blog post calling for these people to be killed.<br /> <br /> B: Oh-h-h, nice.<br /> <br /> J: It also turns out that the formatting of the website – those two pages, specifically – Mike's page, and the listing page of the supporters of GMO have very similar formats and layout. And not just they're both using Wordpress, but similar in ways that someone looking at the code, and the &quot;forensics&quot; can determine that it's probably the same exact code base. I don't know how else to put this ... (shouting) Busted! Like, yeah, Mike, you got caught with your pants way down!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Jay, even more important, what did he say about that website before it was even proven that he was the author?<br /> <br /> J: What did he say? Well, what he did was ...<br /> <br /> B: How did he ...<br /> <br /> J: He did a series of updates on his blog. So, he's littering his blog with these updates. &quot;Update: I didn't actually, these are not my words. I didn't say to kill these people. I'm just quoting some nazi bad guy from 50 years ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: No, no, no, he was quoting the current {{w|President of Germany}}, who was talking about the {{w|Wolf's Lair|Wolf's Den}} assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler.<br /> <br /> R: Well, he said he was paraphrasing.<br /> <br /> S: ''Paraphrasing''. But then I also heard that the German president didn't actually say that.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he said, &quot;I was paraphrasing the German government.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's all irrelevant. He constructed a narrative. {{w|Monsanto}} is evil. They're like the nazis. People who are pro-GMO are paid Monsanto collaborators. They are like nazi collaborators. It was morally acceptable – in fact, an imperitive – to kill nazi collaborators. He laid it all out there. Then he makes the Monsantocollaborators website, claims somebody else did it. And then when the heat gets turned up, he has the audacity to claim, &quot;You know what? I'm beginning to think that this Monsantocollaborators website is a {{w|False flag|false flag}} operation. That Monsanto created it just to make me look like an idiot.&quot;<br /> <br /> And then it turns out, as Jay was pointing out, that &lt;I&gt;he&lt;/I&gt; made the website! So he's pretty much busted in a flat out lie. And there's no other way to really interpret it in my mind.<br /> <br /> J: He didn't have ...<br /> <br /> E: What'd he think?<br /> <br /> J: Well, Evan, what he thought was ...<br /> <br /> E: How could he not think he was not gonna get caught?<br /> <br /> J: In his stupor of hatred, he really thought that he was gonna incite people to take some type of action. Now, I can't say – I can only speculate – and this is, of course, all in my opinion. I honestly don't know if Mike actually wanted people like my brother, Steve, and for David Gorski to get killed. I don't know. But he really made it seem crystal clear that that was the message. That truly was the message.<br /> <br /> E: And, where's the mainstream media on all of this? You know, I'm seeing a lot of writings from people in skeptical circles, science circles, and so forth, but I've not seen it on {{w|ABC News|ABC}}. I have not seen it on {{w|CNN}}. I've not seen it in any of those places.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it would be interesting if it did get wider mainstream coverage, but, we'll see.<br /> <br /> E: He gets plenty of coverage in other ways, all in positive ways.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's true.<br /> <br /> E: On {{w|The Oprah Winfrey Show|Oprah}}, and {{w|The Dr. Oz Show|Dr. Oz}}, and all these ...<br /> <br /> S: The best thing is though, that the FBI is investigating. He crossed a line, where now the FBI is looking into this. So, if they could get access to information to not just strongly suggest, but to actually prove that Mike Adams was behind the Monsantocollaborators website, then he is &lt;I&gt;legally&lt;/I&gt; busted; then he is totally busted. And, I don't know! I don't know how much the law allows for the FBI ... what actions to take against him.<br /> <br /> Either he was deliberately inciting to murder, or this was reckless endangerment. Then, at the very least, his reputation should be in tatters. And that's the one thing that we could most help with, is to make sure everybody remembers ... he should never live this down in my opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Never, ever! Well, we're never gonna let people forget it.<br /> <br /> R: Indeed.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, let's move on. Enough time on this guy.<br /> <br /> === Battery Advance &lt;small&gt;(9:44)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/scientists-approach-holy-grail-of-battery-technology-but-is-it-more-of-a-holey-grail<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about (sarcastic excitement) an exciting new advance in battery technology! Finally! Because we've never had this before!<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yes, another one! (Evan laughs) So ...<br /> <br /> R: It's always 5 to 10 years away, so, has it been 5 to 10 years?<br /> <br /> E: Since we last spoke about this one!<br /> <br /> B: So, scientists have apparently come very close to what some have called the holy grail of battery technology, and that's the phrase that got me. When I see holy grail ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh!<br /> <br /> B: in anything related to science, I perk up. I'm like, &quot;Alright, what the hell is going on here?&quot; Especially battery technology. We need a damn holy grail. So, {{w|Lithium-ion battery|lithium-ion batteries}}, they're one of the premier – I'm sure everyone's heard of them – they're one of the premier, most popular batteries for portable, and rechargeable consumer electronics. They've got many, many very good qualities, excellent energy density. They only slowly lose charge when they're not being used. There's no {{w|memory effect}}, which is kind of an often-abused term.<br /> <br /> Memory effect was used specifically to apply to {{w|Nickel-cadmium battery|nickel cadmium}}, and {{w|Nickel-metal hydride battery|nickel-metal hyride batteries}}. And it had to do with the fact that if you charge one of those batteries before it was fully discharged, then it would slowly decrease the amount of battery life that you would have.<br /> <br /> E: Oh-h! Yeah, you remember that? What a pain! Having to cycle your batteries, and stuff? What a pain.<br /> <br /> B: Right. So, lithium-ion does not suffer from that at all, although they do suffer, of course, from just general age-related issues that are just so annoying, so much so that it's one of the most common complaints about smart phones. So, battery life is still an issue, and not just for smartphones, obviously. There's so many things, cars especially.<br /> <br /> So, for a long time now, scientists have been trying to create a lithium-ion battery that has more lithium, actually in it. So, before I go on, I just got to cover real fast the basic battery components. All batteries need to have three of these things here, these three things.<br /> <br /> An {{w|electrolyte}}, which is basically just a source of electrons. An {{w|anode}}, which dispenses the electrons. And a {{w|cathode}}, which receives them. You need those three. You don't have those three, you pretty much don't have a battery.<br /> <br /> So, lithium-ion batteries have {{w|lithium}} in the electrolyte, which is good, but the anode is only partially lithium. It's not fully lithium. And an all-lithium anode would in fact be a huge improvement because it would allow for things like, it would be much lighter, it would be more energy-dense, and those are two of, I would say, the top three or four most desired qualities of these types of batteries.<br /> <br /> They've had problems though, with these fully lithiumized anodes – I don't think that's a word. Anodes made of lithium expand much more than any other material, and it causes cracks to form in the anode, releasing ions. And these ions create stringy {{w|Dendrite (metal)|dendrites}}, they call 'em, that shorten the battery life. There's chemical reactions between the electrolyte and the anode, and that depletes some of the electrolyte. It shortens the battery life. And, I'm sure you've all heard, of course, of the fire hazards that can happen because of this, because it gets so hot.<br /> <br /> So dealing with these exact issues is precisely what the researchers from {{w|Stanford University}} reporting in – what was it – the {{w|Nature Nanotechnology|Journal of Nature and Nanotechnology}}. Now, they're not quite there yet – how predictable is that – but they do seem to be extremely close. Close enough, I think, that I think it's not premature at all to publish about it, because it is an interesting advance.<br /> <br /> So what they did was create a coating for the anode that's made of these super-tiny carbon nanospheres. So, the nanospheres protect the anode, and prevent all these drawbacks that I've just mentioned. The ratio of lithium, the anode pushes out to the amount put in during a charge cycle is at 99%. So, you get that? That's called the [http://depts.washington.edu/matseed/batteries/MSE/definitions.html Coulombic efficiency]. But it needs to be 99.9% before it's really commercially viable.<br /> <br /> But this is really such a little difference that I think they should be able to make minor improvements, tweak it, and they'll be able to bring it up to snuff with hopefully not a huge amount of effort 'cause clearly, this fundamental concept is far superior to any of the previous attempts that have been made with a fully lithium anode, so that's really cool.<br /> <br /> Clearly, I think this is a really fantastic advance with much promise, but I do have a few problems. First of all, it's battery technology! We hear about advances, like Steve said, all the time! And then bam – nothing! I read article after article that sounds like a fantastic idea. &quot;Wow! This is really gonna change things!&quot; And then, that's like, literally, the last thing I hear about it. And that's generally because there's like, these key battery factors, and one of them or more will invariably fail. Whether it's the scalability, the cost, the recharging cycles; there's always something – a key thing – that is missing that prevents a lot of these things from just really taking off.<br /> <br /> Related to that is the fact that they're not quite at their goal yet, right? They're close, but often, going that last yard, or 9/10ths of a percent in this case, that's often the big problem, right? The last little bit is like, &quot;Damn, we can't quite get it.&quot; And who knows what kind of problems they could encounter that would prevent them from going even that little bit extra. I don't know enough about battery technology to really say what the stumbling blocks could be, although they are confident. But, big deal, everybody's confident.<br /> <br /> And then, finally, like I mentioned earlier, and most annoying to me, was that they described this as a holy grail of battery technology. But, I read a lot of news items on this, and a lot of these reports were saying that the technology could extend the battery life 2 to 3 times!<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's nice.<br /> <br /> B: That's really nice!<br /> <br /> S: It's incremental though.<br /> <br /> B: Holy grail? The holy grail is not incremental. That's a great way to say it. And they even said that affordable electric cars with a 300 mile range. Wait, whoa! $25,000 electric car, 300 mile range? Aren't we close to 300 miles now? If it could go 6, 7, 800, now you're talking!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think you're right, Bob. This is a potential incremental advance in lithium-ion battery technology – hardly worth the hype that they're giving it. And you're also right ... I mean, I literally see a news item about like this every week. I mean, &lt;I&gt;weekly&lt;/I&gt; there is some new press release about some new potential way of eeking more out of a lithium-ion battery. Some sound greater than this in potential.<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, that's right! Some of them, there's even more problems ...<br /> <br /> S: About a year or two ago, I read about using nano-structuring the lithium, and getting ten times the capacity out of it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: But then there's this little problem with how much can be discharged. So, the {{w|discharger}} is a little on the slow end to be actually useful for anything, but ... or, whatever. As you say, it's always something like that, because there's so many potential fatal deal killers with battery technology, that you have to have all your ducks in a row, or it's just a nice lab experiment.<br /> <br /> The other category, that it's like, literally every week, there's an amazing breakthrough, is the solar cell technology. Same thing.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes, yes, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: And they're just talking about some incremental advance in one aspect of the many possible things. And, you know, the thing about solar technology is that it &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; incrementally advancing. Each, every year, we're a little bit better. Okay, but the hype that comes with it now is just incredible.<br /> <br /> B: Right, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again: These types of technologies, batteries and solar {{w|photovoltaics}}, or just solar energy in general, these are the types of things that, god, if I had a trillion dollars laying around, this is the stuff that needs a {{w|Manhattan Project}}. Billions ... because these are the things that will impact and help the entire world just in one fell swoop!<br /> <br /> E: I don't know. Are they gonna come eventually? The whole time for 9+ years we've been talking about this is, it's always been small, incremental stage. Isn't it just the nature of this particular science that this is how it's gonna be, and ...<br /> <br /> S: It's the nature of many sciences. But Evan brings up a good point too, Bob. We may never have that one advance that gives us the 10 time improvement, the order of magnitude. It may be we just need the 2 to 3 times advance that's actually really good when you think about it. And you stack a few of those together, and then you're there. You know?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's fine. But, hey, we can speed up those incremental advances, can't we?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right?<br /> <br /> === Ray Comfort's Gravity Gaffe &lt;small&gt;(18:13)&lt;/small&gt; === <br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ray-comforts-gravity-gaffe<br /> <br /> <br /> S: But, Evan, do you think {{w|Ray Comfort}} can wrap his head around advances in battery and solar technology?<br /> <br /> B: Nice.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, are you kidding? He is Mr. Science. Move over, {{w|Bill Nye}}; get out of the way {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}}; Ray Comfort is here! Evangelical Minister, author, video producer, perhaps best known for the so-called [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Banana_fallacy banana falacy], in which he claimed that the perfection of the design of the banana is an example of God's hand in creation. Yes.<br /> <br /> B: Too bad &lt;I&gt;we&lt;/I&gt; designed the {{w|Cavendish banana subgroup|Cavendish banana}}.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Irrelevant! Not in the Bible.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: So, on July 26th, he threw this pearl of wisdom before his swine - (Bob laughs) - his Facebook readers. &quot;If the Bible isn't God-inspired, explain why ... how the writer of the {{w|Book of Job}} knew 3000 years ago that, 'The Earth hangs upon nothing.'&quot; And that's Job, chapter 26, verse 7? Is that how that works?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: And then he writes, &quot;It wasn't until thousands of years later that science discovered that gravity doesn't exist in space, and that this massive Earth does indeed hang upon nothing.&quot; He later went back and revised that a bit to read, that gravity doesn't exist in space as it does on Earth, and that this massive Earth does, indeed, hang upon nothing. So, essentially he kind of said the same thing.<br /> <br /> You know what this reminded me? So, remember those old commercials from the 70's for {{w|E. F. Hutton &amp; Co.|E.F. Hutton}}? Right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen. So, I'm gonna borrow that, and say, &quot;When Ray Comfort talks about science, skeptics listen, and then correct him!&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Not before laughing.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly. You have to laugh at first about this stuff, and then you can get serious. I laughed when I read one Twitterer who put this out there. He said, &quot;First of all, the Earth doesn't hang, for a start. It's not the bloody family portrait.&quot; (Laughs) Which, I love that picture about, that's exactly ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's a Christmas ornament!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Exactly, right?<br /> <br /> B: It's! In! Orbit!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Yeah, and you can't help yourself. Anywhere you start with this, you're gonna wind up correcting him, so there's really nowhere to go wrong here. So, {{w|Gravitation|gravity}} is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It's one of the four {{w|Fundamental interaction|fundamental forces}} of nature along with {{w|electromagnetism}}, and the nuclear {{w|Strong interaction|strong force}}, and the {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}! And the phenomenon of gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of {{w|spacetime}}.<br /> <br /> But Comfort was under the impression that there's no gravity in space, hence the reason why astronauts appear to float around as they do. But there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; gravity throughout the universe, right? The entire {{w|Observable universe|visible universe}} has revealed the wonders of gravity in all of space and time, and there's just boatloads of evidence to support it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, the entire structure of the known universe is basically authored by gravity. It's the most far-reaching force there is! It's like, hello!<br /> <br /> E: So, obviously, a lot of people chimed in on this, both supporters of his, and people who actually understand science, in making legitimate attempts to correct him. You know, amongst the giggles and things.<br /> <br /> So, he went ahead and corrected himself, a few hours later. Basically, here's what he said, &quot;Up until today, I was one of the ''many'' who believe there's zero gravity in space. We live and learn. Thanks to the many {{w|atheism|atheists}} who kindly corrected me.&quot; But then, he actually goes on by also saying, &quot;{{w|Isaac Newton|Sir Isaac Newton}} is the one -&quot; I'm cutting this short because it's kind of a long post. But he writes, &quot;Sir Isaac Newton is the one who so wisely noted atheism is so senseless. I will therefore try to make it a little clearer for those folks who pretend that God doesn't exist. While there is invisible gravity in space -so much for seeing is believing – this massive Earth hangs on nothing. It has no visible means of support, similar to the no means of support backing {{w|Darwinism|Darwinian evolution}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: He was wrong, but he's still right! Even though he was completely wrong. It's just unbelievable. It's astounding. He is absolutely {{w|Scientific literacy|scientifically illiterate}}. I think we could state that without fearing contradiction.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Very kind.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, he thought there was no gravity in space. You have to have absolutely no effing idea what's going on if you think that. You don't understand the first thing about physics and astronomy, right? And it's fine if somebody's not interested in science, and just doesn't have any idea about things like that, the {{w|Sherri Shepherd|Sherri Shepherds}} of the world, but he takes it a step further. In his abject ignorance of science, he uses that as a basis in order to critize ...<br /> <br /> J: To speculate! He's speculating without any ...<br /> <br /> S: No, not speculating, Jay! He's saying definitively, &quot;Hey! If the Bible isn't inspired by God, explain &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; atheists!&quot; But he's talking totally about his own complete, abject, scientific illiteracy.<br /> <br /> J: And clearly, he's unmoved, when he finds out what the truth is, like we said. No effect! Sorry! Doesn't care. That's the infuriating part of it. Okay, so, he starts off wrong. Okay, he's wrong. Then a lot of people showed him, &quot;This is what the truth is,&quot; and then he finally swallowed that, and then ... doesn't care! Didn't affect him in any way!<br /> <br /> S: Because he's not basing his beliefs on facts or logic or evidence or anything. He's {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} facts that appear to support his position. And when that's wrong, that doesn't matter! He'll just cherry pick &lt;I&gt;other&lt;/I&gt; facts. Like, he went on, &quot;Oh yeah! But gravity's invisible! So much for seeing is believing!&quot; What! It's a total {{w|Non sequitur (logic)|non sequitur}}. Even just, his interpretation of the Job passage, &quot;The Earth hangs upon nothing.&quot; That's meaningless.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> S: It doesn't even have any scientific meaning. It was written by somebody who didn't know the first thing about cosmology or physics, or astronomy.<br /> <br /> E: I liken him taking the Job quote so far out of context, this is the same way the things {{w|Nostradamus}} &quot;predicted&quot; way back when, and applying that to modern times is, there's no connection whatsoever! They have no idea basically ...<br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Feathers &lt;small&gt;(24:17)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/most-dinosaurs-may-have-had-feathers<br /> <br /> S: To finish up the news items, just two quick topics on dinosaurs. I love talking about dinosaurs. The first one has to do with how many dinosaurs probably had feathers. This has been a very fascinating story from our childhood. Rebecca, I think even you, when you were a kid, right, dinosaurs had tough, leathery skin, right? You never saw dinosaurs with feathers.<br /> <br /> But, of course, since really, {{w|Archaeopteryx}}, over a hundred years ago, the idea was that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Archeopteryx looks pretty much half dinosaur, half bird. Since then, especially since the 1980's, we've discovered a lot of feathered dinosaurs, so it wasn't just this one feathered half dinosaur, there was an entire clade, a group, of dinosaurs like {{w|Velociraptor|Velociraptors}}, et cetera, that had feathers of some type, as well as different flying dinosaurs, and other ones that had feathers but couldn't fly, and primitive birds; it's really been fleshed out tremendously.<br /> <br /> But the question remains, is how far back in the dinosaur evolutionary history do feathers go? Feathered dinosaurs are mainly found among the {{w|Theropoda|Theropods}}, which are in the branch of dinosaurs called the {{w|Saurischia|saurischians}} – which, ironically means lizard-hipped – whereas the other branch of dinosaurs, the ones that did not give rise to the birds, are the {{w|Ornithischia|ornithischians}}, which means bird-hip.<br /> <br /> B: Ha!<br /> <br /> S: But, in any case...<br /> <br /> B: How ironic is that?<br /> <br /> S: The theropods are the feathered dinosaurs. So, pretty much, at this point, we can say most theropod dinosaurs probably had feathers at some point in their life, even if it was just {{w|Down feather|downy feathers}} as young, and they may not have survived until adulthood.<br /> <br /> But recently, scientists have discovered what look like primitive feather impressions on the fossil of a neo-ornithischian dinosaur. In other words, from the other main group of dinosaurs. The common anscestor of the ornithischians and the saurichians is basically the common anscestor of all dinosaurs. Now, do you understand the implication of that?<br /> <br /> J: No!<br /> <br /> E: We have to rename dinosaurs.<br /> <br /> S: It means that all dinosaurs may have had feathers, every single dinosaur ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: It may actually go all the way back to the early days of the dinosaurs ...<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a clade.<br /> <br /> B: That's amazing. Did anybody ever even come close to even predicting this?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's incredible.<br /> <br /> B: That's fantastic.<br /> <br /> S: So, this is one fossil, I have to always say. We hate to .. you don't want to hang your hat on one piece of evidence. So, it would be nice if we could find other fossils. It's possible that these feathery filaments were only exist in a juvenile, and not adults. So, it may be that all dinosaurs had down as chicks, as baby dinosaurs, but not as adults. But still, the idea that a feather-like {{w|Integument|integumentary}} adaptation is common to most or all dinosaurs is amazing. So, if this holds up, if this turns out to be the case, that would be fascinating.<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, weren't some of the feathers ... were unique. I mean, these are feathers they had never seen before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Completely, very different structure, whatever. And also, the article, the research I read made a good comparison. They said all dinosaurs had some type of feather, just like all mammals have some type of hair, which is a nice comparison. But, they also made an interesting point. I mean, you look at an elephant - and an elephant's a mammal - not much hair going on on an elephant. There is some.<br /> <br /> So they think for the largest predators, they probably had very, very sparse feathers, if any, really, at all. Which makes sense, because they don't really need them for ...<br /> <br /> S: Temperature control.<br /> <br /> B: ... temperature control. So, I wouldn't run around thinking that, oh, {{w|Tyrannosaurus|T-Rexes}} were running around with feathers everywhere, type of thing. But who knows?<br /> <br /> S: But, it does mean that there is this potential for feather-like structures in dinosaurs as an entire clade ...<br /> <br /> B: Right.<br /> <br /> S: And think about that. So, this is getting back to the whole evidence for evolution thing. If evolution were not true, what are the odds that the group that are anatomically birds probably derived from, also had the potential ... the widespread potential to grow feather-like structures? This is exactly the kind of thing you would predict from evolution. And there's absolutely no reason for it without evolution as a unifying theory.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah. <br /> <br /> B: Steve, I know that these dinosaurs, what they found, these fossils are very special because I think they died in a lake bed, and they were very quickly covered up with a light volcanic silt, or whatever. So, that's why the resolution is so fine. But still, I can't help but thinking, &quot;You know, how many fossils have we dug up, and there was no hint of any type of feather structures on any of the big boys that all these thousands ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, for feather impressions, you need the right kind of conditions as you were saying, Bob. So this is, it may be a rare window. So, we just have to hope ... and also, this dinosaur was found outside of China, so it's the first feathered dinosaur found outside of China, which is also important. So, if we find more in various groups, and in various locations around the world. The more we find, the more evidence there is that really, all dinosaurs had some kind of potential for feathers. Or, you know, when we say, &quot;feathers,&quot; these could all just be monofilaments. They're not necessarily the fully-formed shafted feather that we ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> J: So you consider it an early feather, then, right?<br /> <br /> S: Like a downy feather, oh yeah. Or, it's also probably not on, saying, &quot;early&quot; implies that it later evolved into a bird-like feather, but it probably didn't. You know what I mean? This is in a completely separate branch. These monofilaments probably never became anything that you would think of as a feather. But it's clearly a feather-like appendage, or structure. <br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Extinction &lt;small&gt;(30:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dinosaur-extinction-revisited/<br /> <br /> S: The other dinosaur news item, this is another topic about, which I have been fascinated ever since I was a child. And that is, what wiped out the dinosaurs? Now, everybody knows the answer to this, right? What killed off the dinosaurs?<br /> <br /> R: Inability to brush their teeth, 'cause of their tiny, tiny arms.<br /> <br /> S: (Suppresses laughter) Right, exactly. The {{w|Chicxulub crater}} asteroid from 66 million years ago<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's what we said.<br /> <br /> S: at the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary. So, there's no question that 66 million years ago, a huge meteor – or a {{w|bolide}}, as they call it – whacked into the Earth at Chicxulub ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wait, Steve. Sorry, Steve. Now, bolide, isn't that a more generic term that can account for {{w|Asteroid|asteroids}} &lt;I&gt;and&lt;/I&gt; {{w|Comet|comets}}?<br /> <br /> S: Yes, because they don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, alright.<br /> <br /> S: They don't know, it was a bolide. They don't really know it was a meteor.<br /> <br /> E: And you didn't call it the K-T boundary, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: It's no longer the K-T boundary. Now it's the K-Pg extinction for {{w|Paleogene}}.<br /> <br /> J: And why didn't they send me an email when they changed that?<br /> <br /> S: I know, right? I didn't get the memo either; I just had to read it. So, anyway, it's actually more of a controversy than I was aware of until maybe a couple of years ago. I started to realize this is actually a little more controversial, that the meteor impact 66 million years ago was pretty much the main cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Paleontology|paleontologists}} are still debating among themselves whether or not dinosaurs as a group were already on the way out. One question is did the dinosaurs survive past the K-Pg boundary. I think that has been pretty much put to bed, and the answer is no. That no dinosaur survived past the K-Pg boundary. So, clearly, that is the punctuation mark at the end of dinosaurs' time on Earth. But the question is, were they already in decline, and on their way out, and was the asteroid or the bolide just the {{w|Coup de grâce|coup de grâce}}, that it was the final blow that wiped them out.<br /> <br /> B: That's the essense of the controversy right there.<br /> <br /> S: That's the controversy, that's it. Was it solely responsible, or was it just one among many factors. The other factors that paleontologists discuss are, 1, there were fluctuating sea levels at that time; 2, there was a fluctuating climate at that time in terms of the temperature of the Earth; and 3, and probably the biggest one, is the volcanism and the {{w|Deccan Traps}} located in India. They were massively volcanically active; poisoning the atmosphere, changing the climate; and that could put a lot of stress on dinosaurs and other large animals at the time.<br /> <br /> So, remember at the K-Pg extinction, all large {{w|Vertebrate}} groups, dinosaurs, {{w|Pleisiosauria|Pleisiosaurs}}, {{w|Mosasaur|mosasaurs}}, and {{w|Pterosaur|Pterosaurs}} went extinct, as did many species of {{w|Plankton}}, tropical invertebrates, and reef dwellers. So, it was a widespread extinction. {{w|Mammal|Mammals}}, birds, and insects actually did quite well. They did fine.<br /> <br /> It definitely wasn't something that was unique to dinosaurs. The reason we're talking about this now is a recent review of all existing evidence, trying to address this specific question of were the dinosaurs in decline prior to the meteor impact. And the answer to that is mostly no. A careful review of the evidence shows that there essentially is no significant scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the dinosaurs were in decline at the time the meteor hit. And, therefore, the meteor probably the primary, if not the sole cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> B: That's good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah,<br /> <br /> B: I like it.<br /> <br /> S: What you thought all along turns out to be true, and you can now comfortably ignore this controversy you didn't know about. But, the authors do hold out one tiny little exception.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god, what now?<br /> <br /> J: Oh boy!<br /> <br /> S: There was a slight decline in the species richness of North American ornithischians, but not therapods. So, there was a regional decline in one type of dinosaurs, mainly plant-eaters, the ornithischians. And they said, &quot;Maybe that made dinosaurs more vulnerable to extinction – to the collapse of their ecosystem.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, what's interesting is that that one tiny, little speculation is what the media ran with. And the headlines – even on sites that are normally very good, like {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature News}}, and the {{w|BBC}} – are reporting it as, &quot;The dinosaurs died because of bad luck.&quot; One even said that if the meteor had hit several million years earlier or later, the dinosaurs would have survived. That is &lt;I&gt;not&lt;/I&gt; what the paper concludes.<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: The paper concludes there was basically no decline in dinosaurs, and the meteor wiped them out. And then there was this one little, &quot;Yeah, okay, but the ornithischians were a little bit in decline in North America only, and maybe that made them more vulnerable. We see this pattern all the time, this ... half of what caught my interest with this story because I read the headline, I'm like, &quot;Wow! Really? That's pretty unusual.&quot; And then I read the paper, it's like, the paper's not saying this!<br /> <br /> The main evidence is not what the headlines go for. They pick out some little, tiny, little post script, but that's the thing that has the sexy headline. The dinosaurs died from bad luck! <br /> <br /> B: Holy crap!<br /> <br /> E: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> B: That's pathetic. Fail!<br /> <br /> S: Total fail. Total fail reporting this story. Just the way it gets translated is just unbelievable. And you know, it also shows, you gotta go ... if I just read the press releases, that's the impression I would have walked away with. But you got to go to the original source. You read the paper, and it's like ... I read the whole paper. Because the paper actually is fascinating.<br /> <br /> Anyone who's interested in this topic, the controversy over the extinction of the dinosaurs, this paper is an awesome primer. It goes over everything really well. And then in the discussion, it's very clear, that other than this one tiny exception, the evidence does not support any kind of general decline in dinosaurs as a group prior to the impact of the meteor.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(36:51)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> * Answer to last week: Dot Matrix Printer<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, Who's that Noisy?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, last week's Who's the Noisy, you remember this little tune? Remember this little turn? Remember this? Yeah.<br /> <br /> (Scratchy sound playing {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> S: Heh, that's awesome.<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Evan, can I ask you a question?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, sir.<br /> <br /> J: When we recorded the show last week, did I guess correctly?<br /> <br /> E: Jay, you did guess correctly. You were the first one!<br /> <br /> B: Jay, it seemso obvious now. (Laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Jay, tell us what that was!<br /> <br /> J: Tell us what you've what? That is the old {{w|Dot matrix printing|dot matrix printers}}.<br /> <br /> E: Remember those, dot matrix!<br /> <br /> J: Yes, so the drum beat is the actual feed of the paper. And then the notes, somebody figured out, I guess, a way to print different things with it, you can get different frequencies out of it.<br /> <br /> S: You could watch the whole thing on [http://youtu.be/u8I6qt_Z0Cg YouTube]<br /> <br /> J: Oh, okay. I didn't do that. I didn't cheat.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I mean, after Evan confirmed that, yes, it was a dot-matrix printer, I watched the whole thing on YouTube, and you could see what it's printing. You know, it's just dots. It's not text or anything.<br /> <br /> J: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: A dot-matrix printer?<br /> <br /> S: It does the whole song really well. It's very funny to watch.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> E: It is, and of course, you know, these things are not purposed to create music or stuff. But, hey, give people toys or technology, and they'll do all sorts of things with it that it wasn't supposed to do, though!<br /> <br /> S: They have far too much time on their hands.<br /> <br /> E: I suppose, so ...<br /> <br /> B: I love people like that! I love 'em!<br /> <br /> E: And it generated a ton of email, people having enjoyed that, realizing exactly what it was, expressing their own little comments about it, it was really cool to read. I spent a lot of time this week, 'cause there were hundreds of correct answers. But there can only be one winner each week. Rob McDermit, your name was chosen. Congratulations, you are this week's winner.<br /> <br /> And I want to send out a thank you to Liam Bond, who's also a listener, who actually sent me the link for this particular noisy, from last week. So, thank you, Liam. I appreciate that.<br /> <br /> S: Awesome. What do you got for this week?<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this week, here's a voice you may recognize. You might not, but it's interesting nonetheless. Here we go.<br /> <br /> ?: (Male voice) I went nuts! I just didn't know what happened. I just lost it, and I just became a poor actor in New York. Like being a star student at {{w|Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT}}. I don't know. You tell me. I just ... crazy, I suppose. Swedish ... I don't know how to explain it.<br /> <br /> E: And, go ahead and submit your answer. Correct or not, we don't care. We want to hear from you. WTN@theskepticsguide.org is our email address. Or you can go ahead and post it on our forums, [http://sguforums.com sguforums.com]. Look for the sub thread called Who's that Noisy for episode 473. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, Evan.<br /> <br /> == Interview With Bill Nye &lt;small&gt;(41:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * http://billnye.com/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we recorded a really fun interview with Bill Nye the Science Guy while we were at {{w|The Amaz!ng Meeting|TAM}}. So, we're gonna play some of that interview for you now!<br /> <br /> (Music plays)<br /> <br /> S: We're here at TAM 2014, and it's our distinct pleasure to have with us back again, Bill Nye, the Science Guy! Bill, welcome back to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> BN: It's so good to be back.<br /> <br /> S: So, Bill, I asked you before we started if you wouldn't mind if we asked you about the {{w|Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate|Ham debate}}. I'm sure everyone's asking you about that. So, tell us how you feel. How did that go? Would you do it again? What do you think?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, it went great, for me, or us. I don't think I'd do it again because I don't know how much more ground there is to cover. However, I remind us that the audience is not Ken Ham, or Ken Ham's congregation, or ministry, as he calls it. The audience is everybody on the web. So, 3 and a half million views. And that's seriously, that's just in the first – what's it been – four months. It'll, I presume, just keep getting bigger and bigger.<br /> <br /> Everywhere I go, people watched it! I'm getting my shoes shined today in the {{w|McCarran International Airport|McCarran Airport}}. This guy, through a half dozen people. &quot;Loved the debate, man!&quot; People I've not dealt with yet are, &quot;I hate you! You suck!&quot; And they're coming. But I haven't met many of them yet.<br /> <br /> S: I think that – we all watched the debate, of course – I mean, we ...<br /> <br /> J: It was so cool!<br /> <br /> S: It was cool!<br /> <br /> BN: It's so nice of you guys!<br /> <br /> B: It was an event! Come on!<br /> <br /> S: I love debates. I mean, personally. A lot of people in our movement are really shy about debates, but I think they're great. So, you did a fabulous job. I think, what you did really well, to be honest with you, was you just stuck to science communicating, and you just told the science end of the spectrum really well. And I think that might have, in the end ... I think some people were worried you weren't addressing Ham's points, but he doesn't really have any points.<br /> <br /> BN: I was gonna say, what is it beyond that he's got a book?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you're better off just saying, this is the science, and isn't it cool, and let's all really be enthusiastic about science. And maybe that was actually the best approach to go.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I thought the most important thing, as I will say today many times, you may be right, if I'm not right. The most important thing is to keep your cool. Keep my cool. Because these guys say such extraordinary things. It's just ...<br /> <br /> S: Easy to lose your head.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: Bill, how did you prepare for the debate?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, that's a great question. And thank you for asking.<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> BN: So, first of all, I was overconfident. Then I got to thinking about it, and I was terrified.<br /> <br /> (Loud laughter)<br /> <br /> B: It's probably healthy.<br /> <br /> BN: Then, I went to see {{w|Eugenie Scott}}, and you guys know [http://ncse.com/users/josh Josh Rosenau]? He's the second in command there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, okay, alright.<br /> <br /> BN: He's the head of resear- he's very good. And they really coached me, along with several other people from {{w|National Center for Science Education}}.<br /> <br /> S: 'Genie's not a guy, by the way. She's here.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, and I want to see her talk! Or hear her ... Wait, I'll do both. (Rogues laugh) So she really coached me. And then, do you guys know {{w|Donald Prothero|Don Prothero}}?<br /> <br /> E: Oh, absolutely, yes. Good man.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I made good. I told him I'd buy him dinner; and I bought him dinner night before last. He really helped out. And {{w|Michael Shermer}}. We met for lunch at Michael's house, and those people really coached me. And then I did some research. I mean I spent a little time. And one thing has led to another, and I'm writing a book. I mean, I've written a book. 89,000 words. And it comes out the first week of November.<br /> <br /> J: This is about the whole experience.<br /> <br /> BN: It's about, nah, it's just called, &quot;Evolution: The Science of Creation.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ooh! That's a great title!<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, I'll show ya.<br /> <br /> E: Nice turn.<br /> <br /> BN: In my slide show – it's all about me-e-e. (Rogues laugh) I have the cover, which I got yesterday, Thursday. I got, they sent the latest version of the cover. It's a JPEG.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: So, this is really exciting, but I mention this for me, for us, we have this whole thing. We're always preaching to the choir. But don't you feel like it's growing?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, no question.<br /> <br /> S: I don't like the term &quot;preaching to the choir.&quot; We're educating people who are interested in science and critical thinking.<br /> <br /> BN: And the other thing is, this thing that we all humans are so kooky for, it's a community. That's what TAM's all about, right? Like, you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking? Wow! What a relief, right? As I say, this wouldn't matter except for kids. By kids, I mean students, science students. And that's why it's really important to me. We cannot raise a generation of students who are scientifcally illiterate, and without critical thinking skill, and so I feel that that debate really has done that. Now, a lot of people thought I shouldn't do it.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a lot of skeptics said it.<br /> <br /> E: Because there's reasons why. We've seen historical instances in which the {{w|Duane_Gish#Debates|Gish Gallop has been employed by some of these people, and they run roughshod over.<br /> <br /> BN: Let me just ask you guys, because it is all about...<br /> <br /> B: We don't deny that! We agree with you with that.<br /> <br /> BN: What did I not screw up? I mean, I did it the way I was gonna do it.<br /> <br /> S: My take was what I said already. It was one strategy to just ignore him, and just to make the case for science and evolution. That's actually a good strategy, because once you're on the defensive, you lose because he can create misconceptions in seconds that would take you dozens of minutes to correct. So just forget him.<br /> <br /> So that's one approach. It's kind of like the non-debate debate. The art of fighting without fighting.<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: So ... I also totally agree, because I get this question a lot. I'm just in the middle of a debate with a {{w|9/11 Truth movement|9/11 Truther}}. He'd be like, &quot;Why are you doing this?&quot; Like, &quot;He's not the audience! I don't care about him. I am talking to people who want information, who are on the fence who will be helped by this. And I'm gonna teach them some critical thinking and facts!<br /> <br /> BN: Or just the doubt's introduced to their minds. That's the big thing.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, the one thing our listeners will be very upset about if we don't bring this up, though. The one criticism that does come up is, &quot;But Ham exploited this to raise money for his ...&quot;<br /> <br /> BN: Here's my claim.<br /> <br /> S: You tell me.<br /> <br /> BN: It's not over yet.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> BN: So, he held an online press conference. I don't know if you guys watched that.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't.<br /> <br /> BN: And there's no members of the press at a press conference in {{w|Answers in Genesis}}, it's all their own guys.<br /> <br /> B: Is that afterwards, or before?<br /> <br /> BN: Afterwards, weeks later. So, two things. I got a letter saying that the debate did not influence it at all from a Mark Looy, who's second in command at Answers in ... maybe he's actually the head of Answers in Genesis. And saying it had no influence at all. And then they had this press conference saying it was the wind that blew ... but journalists in {{w|Kentucky}} are looking hard into this. They're trying to follow the money. And I have heard two people who've looked at the {{w|Irs_tax_forms#Fiduciary_reporting|990's}}, you know what I mean?<br /> <br /> Now, this is hearsay, you guys, this is the worst form of evidence. But he may – and this is may, not verified yet, they are trying to find out – but he may have leveraged the loan for the Arc Park against the {{w|Creation Museum}}, and you know, his attendance is going down.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: Because it's generally believed that his attendance is going down because he doesn't have new exhibits. This is in museum talk. So, what I did, you guys, I didn't give money to (inaudible), but I took the money from the debate, and I gave it to a planetary society.<br /> <br /> E: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: And I also gave it to the Kentucky Museum of Science, or maybe it's called {{w|Kentucky Science Center|Kentucky Children's Museum}}, and the {{w|Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal|Cincinnati Museum of Science}}. You know, trying to bracket him. So, it's not ... in other words, I will say, in the short term, you may be right. But in the medium term, I think he's gonna have a lot of trouble.<br /> <br /> E: The final reckoning is not in yet.<br /> <br /> BN: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's only June of the first few months, people!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> S: That's long though, attention span, for the public.<br /> <br /> BN: What'd you say? I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Gotcha for a second.<br /> <br /> BN: Hilarious!<br /> <br /> J: My only critique, is that you could have structured the debate to handle one or two topics, and had a moderator keep people on topic, which ... but I totally agree with Steve. After watching the debate, we were ... definitely more than once, you did such a good job, of just being ...<br /> <br /> E: Love you man!<br /> <br /> J: Well, you insulated yourself! You were immune to him just going off on these insane tangents <br /> <br /> BN: He was galloping gishy wash.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: He was trying, he tried. But overall, I just had a conversation with people an hour ago about this. What was the net result? I'm not sure. I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: It's hard to measure, but ...<br /> <br /> J: It is hard to measure.<br /> <br /> S: I certainly think I encountered a lot of people who like, excited about science because I saw you on that debate.<br /> <br /> BN: That's so nice!<br /> <br /> S: That's a win!<br /> <br /> BN: I've met several science teachers, and of course, this is a self-selecting group, who use it in class. They say they've played it in class, this spring.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> BN: Wow, yeah. That was not the plan. Cool.<br /> <br /> B: Have you guys seen ... they had pictures of people holding up these goofy questions. I think they were people that were actually at the event, and they wrote questions, trying to explain, &quot;Hey, Bill! What do you say about &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; type of thing.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio 22 Questions for Bill Nye]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: If we're descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ...<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> B: Right, that's a perfect example!<br /> <br /> BN: What purpose to monkeys serve, exactly?<br /> <br /> B: So, there was a lot of those pictures, and a lot of websites have been created showing what those people said, and then having somebody else hold another card responding to it, and they were just beautiful lessons on how to deal with ... I know, but it came out of it, and it's just one of the things that I just loved reading and making them look so ridiculous.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.businessinsider.com/22-responses-to-buzzfeeds-22-messages-from-creationists-2014-2 22 Answers for creationists]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: To us. But to his followers ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Oh yeah. But, so what? Like you said, you didn't convert anyone.<br /> <br /> S: They were all gotcha questions. They were gotcha questions that reveal they don't know anything about the science of evolution.<br /> <br /> BN: It's troubling, because we're the most technologically advanced society – you could say Japan – Finland is very, actually, New Zealand is very good. But this is where the iPhone's designed, right? And yet, we have these people in our midst that have no understanding of where an iPhone comes from, for example.<br /> <br /> J: Or don't even care to question it.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah. So that's why we got ... and the big thing, you guys, for me, the critical issues are climate change and the future of science education, and engineers. So, Ken Ham denies climate change. I mean, that's one of his things. He's doing all he can to indoctrinate young people in that area, Kentucky, mostly.<br /> <br /> E: He may see an income stream from going that approach too. A new revenue stream, yeah, by appealing to the people who deny that climate change is happening.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I'm sure that they're the same people. I mean, if you were scientifcally aware, you wouldn't ... I don't think you'd give Answers in Genesis any money, would you?<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Probably not.<br /> <br /> B: But speaking of climate change, I saw you on {{w|Last Week Tonight with John Oliver|John Oliver's show}}.<br /> <br /> BN: That was big fun.<br /> <br /> B: And that was fantastic! I just loved it because none of the people actually stress that point, that you can't have the scientific position here, and then a denier here, when there's ... the {{w|false balance}} is ridiculous. And he just brought, like, what, 97 scientists on.<br /> <br /> BN: 96. So I was 97.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, but they were all speaking in this caucophany.<br /> <br /> BN: I just noticed, you guys, what a great thing it was. It's {{w|Mother's Day}}, alright? And these are actors. &quot;Sure! I'll be an extra on Mother's Day. Sure, okay.&quot; (Rogues laugh) Just shows ya, it's a tough business. But everybody was really cool, really gracious, and people were excitied to participate. John Oliver's really come into his own.<br /> <br /> B: Really!<br /> <br /> E: Oh boy.<br /> <br /> B: He's been nailing it on his show.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, humor's a great vehicle for exposing nonsense.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, this business of irony. And there are books written about the nature of laughter, and what you find ironic. And you'll be shocked to learn that what Michael Shermer calls &quot;socially liberal,&quot; - is that what he says? Or is it liberal social? Socially liberal people have a much more highly developed sense of irony. And this is from brain scans. I didn't ... not my thing!<br /> <br /> E: It's not my thing, it's a fact!<br /> <br /> BN: I've been reading this book, &quot;[http://www.amazon.com/Ha-The-Science-When-Laugh/dp/product-description/0465031706 Ha]!&quot; about the nature of laughter, and it's really fascinating.<br /> <br /> J: So, Bill, tell us about the things that you're doing with the government to help affect change.<br /> <br /> BN: The government? Well, just when the White House calls, I show up.<br /> <br /> S: You've got the red phone? The hotline?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, sort of. You may not know, but there's something called the {{w|Office of Science and Technology Policy}}. Somewhat disclosure – a guy who works there was a grad student under the guy who started the Space Policy Institute. So, he'll call me, or text me. Or he'll have somebody call me or text me. And if the President asked you to come to the {{w|White House}} science fair, you show up, sorry man.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;{{w|Maker Faire}}&quot;, a few weeks ago, and that was cool. These people make kooky stuff in order, or learning the technology, developing the technology that allows us to make things that were not possible to make. You know, I'm a mechanical engineer, and now we're all into {{w|3D printing|additive manufacturing}}, have you heard this expression?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: There didn't use to be any such thing. There was {{w|lost-wax casting}}.<br /> <br /> E: Right<br /> <br /> BN: Or was, there still is ... and moulding, and stuff. And that's in a sense, additive manufacturing, but not like printing rocket engine nozzels.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, right?<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> J: I know, tell me about it.<br /> <br /> E: Exciting.<br /> <br /> J: I can't believe that.<br /> <br /> BN: It's cool. It's exciting. <br /> <br /> S: How involved are you, at all, as a planetary society, with the Dragon, or other ...<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, so {{w|Elon Musk}} was on our board for many years, or a few years, but he had to recuse himself when he got the government contract for commercial crewed space flight. {{w|SpaceX}} has gotten, this is my memory, but it's right around $500 million, right around half a billion dollars from NASA. And so has Sierra Nevada Space, and another one.<br /> <br /> J: The {{w|Orion (spacecraft)|Orion}}?<br /> <br /> BN: The Orion! Yeah, {{w|Boeing}} has also gotten money. So, the Orion, everybody, is a compromise. But that's the nature of politics.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think? What's the bottom line? What's your feeling about the Orion? Is that gonna be a useful addition, or is it gonna be a wasteful boondoggle, or somewhere in between?<br /> <br /> BN: I'm on camera, right? We are hopeful that it's very successful.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> S: (Quiet) Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: No, you guys, you can go to {{w|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station|Cape Canaveral}}, and there is the constellation gantry tower. You know what I mean by this? This thing that holds up a rocket, that was never built because it was underfunded from the get-go, and people presumed, as has happened so often in that past, that once you've got a program started, people will just keep it going no matter what. Space man, this is America. This is what we're gonna do.<br /> <br /> But after a while, somebody said, &quot;Wait, you're way off in your budget. You're just too far off.&quot; And Orion's what's left over from that.<br /> <br /> J: And it's actually derivative of a few different attempts, right?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, everybody, it's fairly popular when you run for President, if you guys go that route, to say we're gonna go to the {{w|Moon}}. It's really popular to say we're gonna go to {{w|Mars}}. But the scale of it, as this guy we work with – we have a lobbyist at the Planetary Society. He says these people in {{w|United States Congress|Congress}} think it's {{w|Pepsi}} or {{w|Coca-Cola|Coke}}, the Moon or Mars.<br /> <br /> No, one's three days, the other is three years. Keeping people alive for three years in deep space with radioation, with no gravity, it's just not so trivial. Not so easy.<br /> <br /> E: All kinds of problems.<br /> <br /> J: Keeping them from going crazy in a spaceship for three years is a challenge.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I didn't write this joke; it was told to me by Congressman {{w|Adam Schiff}}, who, his district used to include JPL,{{w|Jet Propulsion Laboratory| Jet Propulsion Lab}}. Now it doesn't, it's {{w|Judy Chu}}, but now, it still includes {{w|California Institute of Technology|Caltech}}, so he's in that {{w|Pasadena, California|Pasedena}} space community.<br /> <br /> Alright, so they send this mission to Mars that's auto-return. What's it called, Mars Frontier? Anyway, it's a husband and wife that are of an age where they can no longer have children. So they fly out – and this will be possible in the year 2018. There's an automatic return if you get the trajectory just so, the orbit of Mars will sling you right back to Earth. So, you won't land, you'll just woo-o-o, come back. Take pictures, and I guess we (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> So, in the context of this joke, gentlemen, the spacecraft and everything's going well, but on the way back, suddenly there's no communication. There's no words from the thing. It automatically gets in orbit around the Earth, no communication. They go up with another spacecraft, and look in the window, and both the husband and wife have been dismembered, been torn limb from limb. How is this possible? And then, Adam Schiff says, &quot;Well, you've never been married.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, to your point, this is a very serious concern. 400 days with the same people in a room as big as this table. There's some trouble.<br /> <br /> E: People are still people.<br /> <br /> B: To me, the biggest problem is the radiation that you would encounter. No one has any .. is anyone addressing that?<br /> <br /> BN: Yep, well people<br /> <br /> B: Is it a deal breaker?<br /> <br /> BN: ... argue the radiation is not that strong.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> BN: But I'm not sure that's true. And so, by the way, changing it back to ... and the Planetary Society, we hope, again, to launch, to fly, this thing called the {{w|Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment}}. Did you hear about that? LIFE? So, it's a titanium puck with several microbes that are very well characterized and purified, and properly freeze-dried, and some water bears, the {{w|Tardigrade|tardigrades}}.<br /> <br /> B: Tardigrades, they're awesome! They're incredible.<br /> <br /> E: Good innovation!<br /> <br /> J: You're gonna see if they're gonna die?<br /> <br /> BN: I can't see under the table? And then we'd send them, we were gonna send them to Phobos and back, the moon of Mars. But, it crashed. It was a Russian rocket. {{w|Fobos Grunt}}, it was called. Grunt is Russian, my understanding, is Russian for soil. Anyway, it was gonna scoop up some {{w|Phobos (moon)|Phobos}}, but it crashed in the {{w|Pacific Ocean}}.<br /> <br /> So, we might get a chance to fly that again. And, to your point, we'll see if they can take this radiation. Then, presumably, they'd come back, and we'd light 'em up again, put warm water on them and see what happens. So, what are the questions? Do you know radiodurans?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Deinococcus radiodurans|Radiodurans}}! {{w|Extremophile}}! Right? It's my favourite {{w|microorganism}}.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, way to go.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, why does that bacterium have the capability to withstand radiation? This is a cool, evolutionary ...<br /> <br /> J: Does it absorb it?<br /> <br /> B: No, it blows apart the {{w|DNA}}, and it can reform. It's amazing stuff. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: It's also partly that it's simplified its DNA as much as possible, so there are fewer opportunities for it being destroyed.<br /> <br /> BN: No, but here's the thing. Here's what we love to be charmed by in {{w|astrobiology}}, not quite science fiction, thinking out louding, is maybe Mars was hit by an impactor 3 billion years ago. A living thing got into space on a meteorite before it became a meteorite, and just in 17,000 quick years, in a home in orbit, it made its way to the Earth, and we are all ...<br /> <br /> E: So we are all Martians.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Panspermia}}, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's just a cool thing to wonder about, and it's a wonderful thing to investigate. We have the capability. This generation of people, to send the right spacecraft there and look into that question more carefully. I mean, if we were to discover evidence of life on Mars, it would change the world!<br /> <br /> J: Say it.<br /> <br /> E: (Accent) Change the world!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:03:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Item #1]: A recently published analysis indicates that, if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20-40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> [http://blogs.chapman.edu/press-room/2014/07/23/the-quantum-cheshire-cat-can-a-particle-be-separated-from-its-properties/ Item #2]: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself, so the particle was in one location while its magnetic moment was in another.<br /> [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uoia-pun072814.php Item #3]: Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity, in an indium alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real, and one fake. Then I ask my expert skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Are you guys ready for this week?<br /> <br /> R: We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah. As ready as last week.<br /> <br /> S: Nah, there's no real theme this week.<br /> <br /> R: Ah, okay.<br /> <br /> S: No theme. Okay, here we go: Item #1: A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 – 40% of the world will have serious {{w|Water scarcity|water shortage}} by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> <br /> Item #2: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So the particle was in one location while its {{w|magnetic moment}} was in another. And Item #3: Researchers have successfully created {{w|Cooper pair|Cooper pairs}}, the hallmark of {{w|superconductivity}} in an {{w|Indium}} alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: You heard him.<br /> <br /> R: Why couldn't there have been a theme, and the theme was {{w|Cheetah|cheetahs}}, or {{w|Sloth|sloths}}?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, cuddly animals or ...<br /> <br /> R: Instead, the theme is shit Rebecca doesn't know! Again! I'm getting sick of this, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Things that go meow.<br /> <br /> B: I don't mind!<br /> <br /> R: Ugh! Bob, go first.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Bob is going last. Evan, you go first.<br /> <br /> R: Ugh!<br /> <br /> E: Okay. Steve, I'm gonna start with the first one, in which you wrote, &quot;A recently published analysis indicates that blah, blah, blah,&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> S: Yada yada<br /> <br /> E: If we continue our current mix of electricity generation, okay, I buy that. 20 – 40% of the world will have serious water shortage! Okay, why is that? By 2020? And there'll be a global water shortage by 2040? I don't know. This smacks of other things we've kind of heard about in the past, in which these sorts of predictions are made, and they don't always turn out to, I think, be as serious as this. That's not to say it's not a serious issue, but these things tend to get I think, overestimated, and maybe a little over hyped. I don't know if that's one of these.<br /> <br /> Well, moving on to the second one, &quot;Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle.&quot; That's mind boggling, frankly. I don't think there's any other way to put it. Particle was in one location. It's magnetic moment (laughs) was in another. Oh, I've never heard that term, &quot;Magnetic moment,&quot; before.<br /> <br /> J: I know! I thought that was odd.<br /> <br /> B: Where you been?<br /> <br /> E: What? Magnetic moment?<br /> <br /> R: I'm really glad he said that, because I assumed I was the only person who didn't know.<br /> <br /> E: Bob, tell me one time that those words have ever been spoken like that on this show. I can't remember a single time. We've never talked about the magnetic moment of particles, never!<br /> <br /> B: You know, I bet I've mentioned it a couple times in the last 470 episodes.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I bet he has.<br /> <br /> E: Some listener will correct me on that if it's out there, but I frankly, I don't remember.<br /> <br /> B: Frankly, I forget what we talk about last week, dude. Come on.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this is too wild, I think, to not be true. Why the hell, Steve, would you throw this in here? This is, you're really trying to trip us up here. And how they've done it, who the hell knows? High speed collisions, you know? Whatever.<br /> <br /> The last one, researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs. An indium alloy at near room temperature. &lt;I&gt;In&lt;/I&gt; an indium alloy at near room temperature. Okay. Indium, huh? So, basically, have we actually hit the gold standard here.<br /> <br /> S: The holy grail.<br /> <br /> E: Well, I mean, is this some sort of ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Cold fusion}}?<br /> <br /> E: ... what were we talking about. Cold fusion! Thank you. Kind of thing. It's kid of what we're talking about 'cause of the whole room temperature thing. That seems to be very, very ... I'll go with my gut and say that I think the water shortage one is the fiction. I think there's some merit to it, there's something going on. I think that those estimates are too soon though. We may have a serious problem maybe a hundred years from now, but not 5, 8, one generation from now. I think that's an exaggeration. So, that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Jay.<br /> <br /> J: Okay, this first one, very smart, Steve. This first one about the water, the water shortage. I've read quite a bit about that. I've heard about it. I think I've seen a TV show about the water shortage claims that are coming, and a lot of this hype about, are we shipping all of our water to China, and everything? I don't know.<br /> <br /> I do think though, that there may be some truth in this, but I'm not quite sure that this news item itself is completely true. It seems plausible that we could have water shortages. I just don't know, Steve, the connection here with electricity. I'm a little confused about.<br /> <br /> Okay, the second one about the particle being separated from its magnetic moment. I kind of agree with Evan. It's an oddball item, and it seems to be either that they tried to do it, and they couldn't do it. I just don't see a good fake here.<br /> <br /> This last one, however, I would think that if this happened, the way that Steve is saying it, that there'd be nothing preventing my browser from exploding in my face with news items coming up about room temperature superconductivity. So I'm gonna say that the third one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's where I was leaning. The only one of these that I can even really parse is the one about electricity generation and water shortage. And yeah, I do know that there is a connection between those two. I think that it's because nuclear power plants and coal plants too, maybe, require a lot of water for cooling. That one makes sense to me, and, yeah, global water shortage by 2040, that can mean a lot of things. It's kind of vague, what kind of shortage are we talking about? We obviously already have problems with droughts and stuff in parts of the United States, but also, we fly drinking water from Fiji into our Starbucks. So ...<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah! {{w|Fiji}} water? Do you not know about Fiji water? Fiji water literally takes the only potable water in Fiji, and leaves the residents to drink sewage water. Fun times. So (Laughs) yeah. Global water shortage, okay, probably something that majorly affects the developing nations more, but yeah.<br /> <br /> So, I'm going between the other two. I don't know what a magnetic moment is. I assumed it's something like it's position, in space or something. I don't know. Why not? But yeah, the room temperature thing. I was wondering if it was something like cold fusion-esque, and Evan and Jay seem to think so. And so, I think, yeah. If that's what this has to do with, then, yeah, I find that the least believable. So I'm going to go with the Cooper pairs at room temperature being the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: A-a-and, Bob.<br /> <br /> B: Alright, the water shortage, these numbers seem a little dramatic to me. I always heard it's coming. 20 – 40%! You know, 6 years, potentially? Seri ... and 2040 ... what is a global water shortage? How extensive? How global would that be? But I don't have huge problems with that.<br /> <br /> The second one, yeah, {{w|quantum mechanics}} is crazy! Absolutely, I totally buy this. I mean, you talking about things like {{w|Quantum entanglement|entanglement}} and {{w|Quantum superposition|superposition}}, yeah, I could totally see this. It's a little surprising to me, but you gotta just learn to roll with quantum mechanics, unless of course, the claims are pseudoscientific. But, so yeah, that one doesn't surprise me. I really, really hope that's true, 'cause that's fantastic.<br /> <br /> Yeah, I got a problem with the third one. Cooper pairs, come on. Room temperature? No. We're not there yet. And I have to agree with Jay that this would be all over. This would be huge. That's the holy grail, right there! Room temperature. Bet they didn't think of that one!<br /> <br /> I remember first hearing about high temperature superconductivity back, what Steve, '90's? Early '90's? No, late '80's maybe.<br /> <br /> S: Something like that.<br /> <br /> B: And I'm thinking, &quot;Oh boy!&quot; You know, and now, twenty-something, thirty years later, it's still mysterious. So, yeah, I'm just not buying that we've got that yet. I mean, I really hope I'm wrong on this one, but I severely doubt it, so that's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, well, you all agree with #2, so let's start there. Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So, the particle was in one place, while it's magnetic moment was in another. You guys all think this one is science ...<br /> <br /> R: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: and this one is ... So you guys don't know what a magnetic moment is?<br /> <br /> R: Well, Bob ... I <br /> <br /> J: I know what it is!<br /> <br /> E: It's when you look across the room, and you stare at that special person in the eyes, and you have a connection that you can't quite explain.<br /> <br /> R: (Singing) This magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so the magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantitiy that determines the torque-able experienced in an external {{w|magnetic field}}.<br /> <br /> B: You are correct, sir!<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, it's basically a propery of the magnetic, it's own magnetism, think about it that way. A bar {{w|magnet}}, an {{w|electron}}, a {{w|molecule}}, and a {{w|planet}} all have magnetic moments. And apparently, so do {{w|neutrons}}. This one is science. And Bob's right. That wacky quantum mechanics can do anything, apparently.<br /> <br /> B: Almost.<br /> <br /> S: Very ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Deus ex machina}} of Science or Fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: So, what the scientists did was they used a neutron {{w|Interferometry|interferometer}}. Ever hear of that, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you take a beam of neutrons, you split them into two paths, or the neutrons could basically take one of two ...<br /> <br /> J: The two paths, I know.<br /> <br /> B: What?<br /> <br /> J: You actually described it pretty well, Steve. Now, taking that to the next step though, when you decouple these {{w|Electric power conversion|power converters}} ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: and you cross phase them through the actual early, early {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} converter type systems.<br /> <br /> B: (Snickering) Java ...<br /> <br /> J: What you get is a semi crossed {{w|Parallax|paralaxed}} {{w|Paralysis|paralyzation}} of the {{w|Coma|comatose}} {{w|Crematory|cremators}}.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Did you get the power converters at {{w|Hitachi station}}?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Technobabble}}!<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now, what really happened was, you could send this beam of neutrons simultaneously down two paths! This is standard quantium mechanics, right?<br /> <br /> J: Are you saying there's two paths you can go down, but in the long run, it's not too late to change the road you're on?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct, because the neutrons can decide later if they went down Path A, or Path B, right? They go down both simultaneously until they interact with something, then they have to choose the path. That's standard quantum mechanics. But what they were able to do in this experiment was by aligning the magnetic moments of the two streams, and then selecting for one stream, they could select for neutrons that had to go through one path. Does that make sense? They basically filtered out one of the two paths.<br /> <br /> So now they have, even though those streams came together again, they could select out the neutrons that chose Path A, and filter out all the neutrons that chose Path B. But at the same time, they could also align the magnetic moment of the neutrons, and they did it differently for the two paths. And what they were able to show was that the neutrons at the other end went down Path A, but their magnetic moment essentially went down Path B. Does that make sense?<br /> <br /> E: Uh ...<br /> <br /> B: That's sweet as hell, man.<br /> <br /> E: Sure!<br /> <br /> B: I love quantum mechanics.<br /> <br /> S: So, they separated the particle from its own magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's ...<br /> <br /> B: I love it!<br /> <br /> S: Crazy quantum mechanics. Alright, so that one is science. So, I guess we'll go on to #3. Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity in an indium alloy at near room temperature. Bob, Jay, and Rebecca think this one is fiction. Evan thinks this one is science. And this one is ... so you guys are all assuming that creating Cooper pairs ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god.<br /> <br /> S: ... is equal to superconductivity.<br /> <br /> R: Look, I don't know, Steve.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I am!<br /> <br /> S: What if they were able to create Cooper pairs even though the material itself wasn't superconducting? Bob, you know what Cooper pairs are.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, the electrons get bound together, and they can just slide through, and not be disturbed by any part of the material. It's one of the hallmarks of a special class of superconductivity, but, yeah, technically, you're right. And if it's true, I'm gonna kill you.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Well ...<br /> <br /> E: On his birthday?<br /> <br /> S: It is technically correct, but this one is the fiction!<br /> <br /> R: Hurray!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: So ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! I got one right!<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Cooper pairs are basically superconductivity. But, this is based on a real item. I always get a chuckle when you guys say, &quot;How could Steve think of this?&quot; Well, I'm not making stuff up. I'm always basing it off of some item. I'm just tweaking.<br /> <br /> B: He's not that creative!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I don't have to be that creative, yeah. What this ... the item basically is just physicists understanding a little bit better, the nature of superconductivity. And the hope is that one day, one magical day, they'll use this knowledge in order to be able to finally get the &quot;holy grail,&quot; and make room temperature superconductors. But, yeah, they have not created anything. They just were able to, make some further investigation to sort of further understanding essentially the quantum glue that holds these Cooper pairs together. That was the breakthrough.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. But they did use indium; So, I pulled that out of there. Indium, by the way, indium is an element. It is atomic #49. It is a metal. It's a soft metal with a fairly low melting point. It's chemically similar to {{w|gallium}} and {{w|thallium}}, indium. Pretty cool.<br /> <br /> E: It sounds like two dwarves from {{w|The Lord of the Rings|Lord of the Rings}}.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> B: Gallium! Thalium!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Right, okay, let's go on to #1. A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 to 40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040 is ... science. Doesn't mean this is going to come ...<br /> <br /> R: Hooray for water scarcity!<br /> <br /> S: So, the connection, as Rebecca said, is we need to use a lot of water to cool these power generators. Whether it's nuclear, or it's coal, or whatever. You can't let them overheat. A lot of power plants don't really track how much water they're using. So the authors are saying this is a problem. We need to more carefully track this.<br /> <br /> R: Really? Jeez.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, and what they mean by a water shortage is that you will essentially have to choose between power generation and drinking water, that we won't have enough to do both.<br /> <br /> E: Hrmm...<br /> <br /> S: By 2040 – which doesn't sound that far in the future when you think about it -<br /> <br /> E: A generation.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that the entire world will be experiencing this water shortage if we are meeting our electricity needs at that time with our current mix of power generation. So, what's the solution? Well, they make a number of recommendations. Improve energy efficiency; better research on alternative cooling cycles; researching on how much water power plants use; massive investments in wind and solar, because wind and solar don't use a lot of water; and abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water stressed places, which is, they say, half the planet, because that's what uses the most water to make electricity.<br /> <br /> So, yeah, pretty frightening extrapolation, but of course, it's one study, this is &lt;I&gt;their&lt;/I&gt; analysis. These are always difficult. There's a lot of moving parts, you know.<br /> <br /> E: That's why I thought it wasn't science, you know.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you know. I just said, it's a published analysis that indicates this. I thought you could believe it or not believe it. But any single analysis like this, like, &quot;We're reaching {{w|peak oil}}!&quot; Any of those, you always got to take them with a grain of salt because, you know, you leave out one factor, and it can change the whole outcome, you know? So, it's very tricky. And I'd like to see that there's a consensus, that multiple independant analyses are overlapping, coming to the same conclusion. So ... but it definitely is one more reason that even if their projections are overly grim, it's one more reason to get off fossil fuels, and to make, as Bob suggests, a massive investment in at least solar energy. So, there you have it. Good job, guys!<br /> <br /> J: Thank you!<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, except Evan.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you!<br /> <br /> == Announcements: &lt;small&gt;(1:20:33)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Jay, before we get to the quote, I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, I want to give a very sincere thank you to everyone who has donated to our legal defence fund. We are already, we've covered about 60% of the legal expenses that we have made so far. So, we have covered a huge chunk of our legal expenses with the donations.<br /> <br /> Obviously, we can't know ahead of time what the ultimate costs are gonna be. I have estimates from my lawyer, and it's a lot. You know, it's probably gonna be somewhere between 60 and 70,000 dollars if the thing goes the distance. So, we do have a ways to go before we got there. But, in just one week, there has been an incredible outpouring of support for the SGU, for our defence against this lawsuit, and of course, people donating to support our defence, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it.<br /> <br /> We also wanted to point out that the SGU, always looking to expand our activity, has a new webpage on our SGU homepage, the Science News page. So, if you go to [http://www.theskepticsguide.org theskepticsguide.org], and you click on the science news banner, you will see that we're putting up about two to three news items per day. We're going to be expanding it, but we're selecting items that are like, the coolest news items of the day. And Evan is doing some reviews of ... Evan has got, you've got two that you're doing. Why don't you describe them really quick for us, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, thanks, Steve. So, I am doing two reviews, like, you said. One is ... I call it the SGU Cutting Room Floor. So, these are some items that we would have loved to have gotten to on the last episode of the show, but just didn't have the time. There's always more items than we have time for. And then the other one is called the Top 5 Ridiculous Comments of the Week. So, I scour the internet, looking for people making all sorts of ridiculous comments on all sorts of different things, and I try to condense that down to the top 5 each week. So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yep, and we're adding some special segments. We have a Weird, Wildlife Wednesday segment that we're putting out. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/author/kate Kate Christian] is doing that for us. Kate's really been helpf7ul with all of our social media efforts. So, I'd like to thank her as well for helping us get this going. And send us, if you have any ideas for science news bits you'd like to see on the Science News page, let us know. We're always looking to expand the content that we're putting there.<br /> <br /> And, of course, all of this is interfacing with our Facebook page, which we have been extremely active on as well. So, if you haven't checked out our Facebook page recently, check it out. Check out our Science News page. Send us ideas for stuff you'd like to see there.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:23:14)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;“I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.”-Lawrence M. Krauss&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, give us the quote.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;I hope that every person at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.” (Shouting) {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}}!<br /> <br /> S: I like that! I like that. It's a very good quote. It is a good, sobering, humbling experience to have something you firmly believe be proven completely and utterly wrong.<br /> <br /> J: That was sent in by a listener named, Brendan Shwass, from New Zealand. Brendan, we're fully expecting to meet you in person when we will be in New Zealand, I think, what is that, the first week of December?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me this week, everyone.<br /> <br /> B: Sure, Steve.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> R: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you guys.<br /> <br /> R: What a better way to spend your birthday.<br /> <br /> J: I love you.<br /> <br /> E: Hey, happy birthda-a-ay!<br /> <br /> J: You're one of the best people I know, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you brotha. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> Before Greenwich got Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude, used by sailors.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Prime meridian (Greenwich)|Zero Longitude}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> All batteries need to have three things in order to work: An electrolite, an anode, and a cathode.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Battery (electricity)|Battery components}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The KT extinction boundary has been renamed the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary.<br /> <br /> Humanity is headed for a global water shortage&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Looming water shortage]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y<br /> |General Science = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> |SGU = y<br /> |Technology = y}}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_473&diff=9569 2015-01-17T05:47:26Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Introduction */ Various minor corrections.</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |transcription = <br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |time-stamps = <br /> |formatting = <br /> |links = <br /> |Today I Learned list = <br /> |categories = <br /> |segment redirects = <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 473<br /> |episodeDate = August 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Fluffydinosaur1.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |rebecca = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = BN: {{w|Bill Nye}}<br /> |guest2 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no second guest --&gt;<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-02.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44275.0.html<br /> |qowText = I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,<br /> <br /> B: Hey everybody<br /> <br /> S: Rebecca Watson<br /> <br /> R: Hello, everyone!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys.<br /> <br /> S: And Evan Bernstein<br /> <br /> E: Steve, did you say it's July 29th?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct!<br /> <br /> E: As in July 29th, 1964?<br /> <br /> S: 1964?<br /> <br /> E: 50 years ago, to the day, er...<br /> <br /> R: Oh, well, this day in Skepticism, Steve Novella was born!<br /> <br /> (Rogues cheer)<br /> <br /> J: That's actually relevant too! That's really cool! Happy birthday, brother!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you so much.<br /> <br /> E: Happy birthday.<br /> <br /> S: Yep. I'm 50.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel?<br /> <br /> S: The big 5 – 0<br /> <br /> J: Holy crap.<br /> <br /> S: The Y-5-0<br /> <br /> B: Oh mother ....<br /> <br /> S: Four bits.<br /> <br /> R: How's it feel? Do you feel different?<br /> <br /> S: Half a century.<br /> <br /> R: Have you bought a sports car?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, no, I'm way past my midlife crisis already.<br /> <br /> R: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> S: I decided to start a podcast for my midlife crisis.<br /> <br /> R: That's sad.<br /> <br /> E: Look what it's gotten you.<br /> B: You freak.<br /> <br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(1:11)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 2, 1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by Parliament.<br /> <br /> R: Well, you know what, you share a birthday with {{w|Greenwich Mean Time}}! Did you know that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Is that right?<br /> <br /> R: Yah!<br /> <br /> E: Awesome!<br /> <br /> R: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (British accent) Greenwich Mean Time, I say.<br /> <br /> R: Well, oh, wait. No, you don't, because this was August 2nd, the day this podcast comes out.<br /> <br /> B: Psyche!<br /> <br /> R: Sorry ...<br /> <br /> S: Close.<br /> <br /> E: In podcast land, you share, but not in real life.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah. Well, there goes my big segue. Anyway, in 1880, on August 2nd, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by the {{w|Parliament of the United Kingdom|UK Parliament}}. Which is, it's always weird to me when I think about time suddenly coming into existence. (Laughs) I mean, obviously, time has always existed, because it always requires time.<br /> <br /> E: Oh!<br /> <br /> R: (Laughs) But for a long time, each town would have it's own, particular time; and there was really no desperate need to make sure that they were all coordinated but once ...<br /> <br /> B: Train schedules!<br /> <br /> R: Train schedules were one thing, but the reason why Greenwich Mean Time was adopted when it was, was apparently more for naval navigation, and it was only standardized and used across Europe once train transportation increased. And then it wasn't until three years after it was officially adopted that the United States adopted it as well. And that was when telegraph lines first started transmitting (inaudible) &lt;!type?&gt; signals to all the cities.<br /> <br /> B: Ah-h-h...<br /> <br /> R: So, yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Cool.<br /> <br /> R: And it was adopted worldwide, November 1st, 1884.<br /> <br /> J: Cool! Very cool!<br /> <br /> R: And then there was time.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, before Greenwich was Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude. So, when sailors – as you said – sailors would set their clocks to Greenwich Time, because then they would estimate their longitude by how far they were from Greenwich, basically. Based upon, &quot;Oh, it's noon! And the sun is two hours past being directly overhead. So I must be two hours past zero longitude.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> J: (British accent) There you have it.<br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Mike Adams Follow Up &lt;small&gt;(3:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/07/28/fbi-turns-up-heat-on-mike-adams-as-health-ranger-fiasco-widens-plus-adams-archive/<br /> <br /> S: So, Jay, you're gonna give us a quick follow up on the whole {{w|NaturalNews|Mike Adams}} hubbub from last week.<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Ugh.<br /> <br /> S: Things are happening so fast we actually missed some important updates when we recorded the last show.<br /> <br /> J: Well, yeah, the quick summary is that Mike wrote a blog post where he compares people that support or are neutral about {{w|Genetically modified organism|GMOs}} to the {{w|Nazi Germany|Nazi regime}} and, in essence, put out a death threat against anybody that supports GMOs, saying that good people – who are anti-GMO – should kill people who are pro-GMO. And he riddled his blog post with pictures of {{w|Adolf Hitler|Hitler}}, and the Nazi party, and all the terrible things that they did, using that as ...<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Swastika#As_the_symbol_of_Nazism|Swastikas}}.<br /> <br /> J: yeah, swastikas, everything, using it as a way to convince his readers that they need to take action. Now, the big thing that he did, also, was that he requested that someone make a website that lists the offending parties, people that support GMO. And Steve, and {{w|David Gorski}}, and a ton of other journalists and news outlets were listed on this website. And then things got stranger.<br /> <br /> If that blog post wasn't strange and horrible enough, the update is that now the {{w|Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI}} is really turning up the heat on Mike, and they're investigating him. And some legitimate proof has come down the pike through web forensics that Mike is actually the person who created the listing website. Let me give you the details behind that.<br /> <br /> Now keep in mind, he supposedly requested during his blog, in the middle of his blog, for someone to create this website. Wouldn't it be convenient if somebody created this list of people that we can mark as our enemies, the big supporters of GMO, the big offenders. The &quot;people that should be killed,&quot; right? Then this website pops up very soon after, and Mike updates his blog saying, &quot;and here's a link to the website that some reader of my blog created.&quot;<br /> <br /> Turns out, Mike is that reader. It turns out that that website was created a short while before Mike actually posted his blog post calling for these people to be killed.<br /> <br /> B: Oh-h-h, nice.<br /> <br /> J: It also turns out that the formatting of the website – those two pages, specifically – Mike's page, and the listing page of the supporters of GMO have very similar formats and layout. And not just they're both using Wordpress, but similar in ways that someone looking at the code, and the &quot;forensics&quot; can determine that it's probably the same exact code base. I don't know how else to put this ... (shouting) Busted! Like, yeah, Mike, you got caught with your pants way down!<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but Jay, even more important, what did he say about that website before it was even proven that he was the author?<br /> <br /> J: What did he say? Well, what he did was ...<br /> <br /> B: How did he ...<br /> <br /> J: He did a series of updates on his blog. So, he's littering his blog with these updates. &quot;Update: I didn't actually, these are not my words. I didn't say to kill these people. I'm just quoting some nazi bad guy from 50 years ago.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: No, no, no, he was quoting the current {{w|President of Germany}}, who was talking about the {{w|Wolf's Lair|Wolf's Den}} assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler.<br /> <br /> R: Well, he said he was paraphrasing.<br /> <br /> S: ''Paraphrasing''. But then I also heard that the German president didn't actually say that.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, he said, &quot;I was paraphrasing the German government.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's all irrelevant. He constructed a narrative. {{w|Monsanto}} is evil. They're like the nazis. People who are pro-GMO are paid Monsanto collaborators. They are like nazi collaborators. It was morally acceptable – in fact, an imperitive – to kill nazi collaborators. He laid it all out there. Then he makes the Monsantocollaborators website, claims somebody else did it. And then when the heat gets turned up, he has the audacity to claim, &quot;You know what? I'm beginning to think that this Monsantocollaborators website is a {{w|False flag|false flag}} operation. That Monsanto created it just to make me look like an idiot.&quot;<br /> <br /> And then it turns out, as Jay was pointing out, that &lt;I&gt;he&lt;/I&gt; made the website! So he's pretty much busted in a flat out lie. And there's no other way to really interpret it in my mind.<br /> <br /> J: He didn't have ...<br /> <br /> E: What'd he think?<br /> <br /> J: Well, Evan, what he thought was ...<br /> <br /> E: How could he not think he was not gonna get caught?<br /> <br /> J: In his stupor of hatred, he really thought that he was gonna incite people to take some type of action. Now, I can't say – I can only speculate – and this is, of course, all in my opinion. I honestly don't know if Mike actually wanted people like my brother, Steve, and for David Gorski to get killed. I don't know. But he really made it seem crystal clear that that was the message. That truly was the message.<br /> <br /> E: And, where's the mainstream media on all of this? You know, I'm seeing a lot of writings from people in skeptical circles, science circles, and so forth, but I've not seen it on {{w|ABC News|ABC}}. I have not seen it on {{w|CNN}}. I've not seen it in any of those places.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it would be interesting if it did get wider mainstream coverage, but, we'll see.<br /> <br /> E: He gets plenty of coverage in other ways, all in positive ways.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's true.<br /> <br /> E: On {{w|The Oprah Winfrey Show|Oprah}}, and {{w|The Dr. Oz Show|Dr. Oz}}, and all these ...<br /> <br /> S: The best thing is though, that the FBI is investigating. He crossed a line, where now the FBI is looking into this. So, if they could get access to information to not just strongly suggest, but to actually prove that Mike Adams was behind the Monsantocollaborators website, then he is &lt;I&gt;legally&lt;/I&gt; busted; then he is totally busted. And, I don't know! I don't know how much the law allows for the FBI ... what actions to take against him.<br /> <br /> Either he was deliberately inciting to murder, or this was reckless endangerment. Then, at the very least, his reputation should be in tatters. And that's the one thing that we could most help with, is to make sure everybody remembers ... he should never live this down in my opinion.<br /> <br /> E: Never, ever! Well, we're never gonna let people forget it.<br /> <br /> R: Indeed.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, let's move on. Enough time on this guy.<br /> <br /> === Battery Advance &lt;small&gt;(9:44)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/scientists-approach-holy-grail-of-battery-technology-but-is-it-more-of-a-holey-grail<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about (sarcastic excitement) an exciting new advance in battery technology! Finally! Because we've never had this before!<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yes, another one! (Evan laughs) So ...<br /> <br /> R: It's always 5 to 10 years away, so, has it been 5 to 10 years?<br /> <br /> E: Since we last spoke about this one!<br /> <br /> B: So, scientists have apparently come very close to what some have called the holy grail of battery technology, and that's the phrase that got me. When I see holy grail ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh!<br /> <br /> B: in anything related to science, I perk up. I'm like, &quot;Alright, what the hell is going on here?&quot; Especially battery technology. We need a damn holy grail. So, {{w|Lithium-ion battery|lithium-ion batteries}}, they're one of the premier – I'm sure everyone's heard of them – they're one of the premier, most popular batteries for portable, and rechargeable consumer electronics. They've got many, many very good qualities, excellent energy density. They only slowly lose charge when they're not being used. There's no {{w|memory effect}}, which is kind of an often-abused term.<br /> <br /> Memory effect was used specifically to apply to {{w|Nickel-cadmium battery|nickel cadmium}}, and {{w|Nickel-metal hydride battery|nickel-metal hyride batteries}}. And it had to do with the fact that if you charge one of those batteries before it was fully discharged, then it would slowly decrease the amount of battery life that you would have.<br /> <br /> E: Oh-h! Yeah, you remember that? What a pain! Having to cycle your batteries, and stuff? What a pain.<br /> <br /> B: Right. So, lithium-ion does not suffer from that at all, although they do suffer, of course, from just general age-related issues that are just so annoying, so much so that it's one of the most common complaints about smart phones. So, battery life is still an issue, and not just for smartphones, obviously. There's so many things, cars especially.<br /> <br /> So, for a long time now, scientists have been trying to create a lithium-ion battery that has more lithium, actually in it. So, before I go on, I just got to cover real fast the basic battery components. All batteries need to have three of these things here, these three things.<br /> <br /> An {{w|electrolyte}}, which is basically just a source of electrons. An {{w|anode}}, which dispenses the electrons. And a {{w|cathode}}, which receives them. You need those three. You don't have those three, you pretty much don't have a battery.<br /> <br /> So, lithium-ion batteries have {{w|lithium}} in the electrolyte, which is good, but the anode is only partially lithium. It's not fully lithium. And an all-lithium anode would in fact be a huge improvement because it would allow for things like, it would be much lighter, it would be more energy-dense, and those are two of, I would say, the top three or four most desired qualities of these types of batteries.<br /> <br /> They've had problems though, with these fully lithiumized anodes – I don't think that's a word. Anodes made of lithium expand much more than any other material, and it causes cracks to form in the anode, releasing ions. And these ions create stringy {{w|Dendrite (metal)|dendrites}}, they call 'em, that shorten the battery life. There's chemical reactions between the electrolyte and the anode, and that depletes some of the electrolyte. It shortens the battery life. And, I'm sure you've all heard, of course, of the fire hazards that can happen because of this, because it gets so hot.<br /> <br /> So dealing with these exact issues is precisely what the researchers from {{w|Stanford University}} reporting in – what was it – the {{w|Nature Nanotechnology|Journal of Nature and Nanotechnology}}. Now, they're not quite there yet – how predictable is that – but they do seem to be extremely close. Close enough, I think, that I think it's not premature at all to publish about it, because it is an interesting advance.<br /> <br /> So what they did was create a coating for the anode that's made of these super-tiny carbon nanospheres. So, the nanospheres protect the anode, and prevent all these drawbacks that I've just mentioned. The ratio of lithium, the anode pushes out to the amount put in during a charge cycle is at 99%. So, you get that? That's called the [http://depts.washington.edu/matseed/batteries/MSE/definitions.html Coulombic efficiency]. But it needs to be 99.9% before it's really commercially viable.<br /> <br /> But this is really such a little difference that I think they should be able to make minor improvements, tweak it, and they'll be able to bring it up to snuff with hopefully not a huge amount of effort 'cause clearly, this fundamental concept is far superior to any of the previous attempts that have been made with a fully lithium anode, so that's really cool.<br /> <br /> Clearly, I think this is a really fantastic advance with much promise, but I do have a few problems. First of all, it's battery technology! We hear about advances, like Steve said, all the time! And then bam – nothing! I read article after article that sounds like a fantastic idea. &quot;Wow! This is really gonna change things!&quot; And then, that's like, literally, the last thing I hear about it. And that's generally because there's like, these key battery factors, and one of them or more will invariably fail. Whether it's the scalability, the cost, the recharging cycles; there's always something – a key thing – that is missing that prevents a lot of these things from just really taking off.<br /> <br /> Related to that is the fact that they're not quite at their goal yet, right? They're close, but often, going that last yard, or 9/10ths of a percent in this case, that's often the big problem, right? The last little bit is like, &quot;Damn, we can't quite get it.&quot; And who knows what kind of problems they could encounter that would prevent them from going even that little bit extra. I don't know enough about battery technology to really say what the stumbling blocks could be, although they are confident. But, big deal, everybody's confident.<br /> <br /> And then, finally, like I mentioned earlier, and most annoying to me, was that they described this as a holy grail of battery technology. But, I read a lot of news items on this, and a lot of these reports were saying that the technology could extend the battery life 2 to 3 times!<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that's nice.<br /> <br /> B: That's really nice!<br /> <br /> S: It's incremental though.<br /> <br /> B: Holy grail? The holy grail is not incremental. That's a great way to say it. And they even said that affordable electric cars with a 300 mile range. Wait, whoa! $25,000 electric car, 300 mile range? Aren't we close to 300 miles now? If it could go 6, 7, 800, now you're talking!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think you're right, Bob. Thiis is a potential incremental advance in lithium-ion battery technology – hardly worth the hype that they're giving it. And you're also right ... I mean, I literally see a news item about like this every week. I mean, &lt;I&gt;weekly&lt;/I&gt; there is some new press release about some new potential way of eeking more out of a lithium-ion battery. Some sound greater than this in potential.<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, that's right! Some of them, there's even more problems ...<br /> <br /> S: About a year or two ago, I read about using nano-structuring the lithium, and getting ten times the capacity out of it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: But then there's this little problem with how much can be discharged. So, the {{w|discharger}} is a little on the slow end to be actually useful for anything, but ... or, whatever. As you say, it's always something like that, because there's so many potential fatal deal killers with battery technology, that you have to have all your ducks in a row, or it's just a nice lab experiment.<br /> <br /> The other category, that it's like, literally every week, there's an amazing breakthrough, is the solar cell technology. Same thing.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yes, yes, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: And they're just talking about some incremental advance in one aspect of the many possible things. And, you know, the thing about solar technology is that it &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; incrementally advancing. Each, every year, we're a little bit better. Okay, but the hype that comes with it now is just incredible.<br /> <br /> B: Right, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again: These types of technologies, batteries and solar {{w|photovoltaics}}, or just solar energy in general, these are the types of things that, gee, god, if I had a trillion dollars laying around, this is the stuff that needs a {{w|Manhattan Project}}. Billions ... because these are the things that will impact and help the entire world just in one fell swoop!<br /> <br /> E: I don't know. Are they gonna come eventually? The whole time for 9+ years we've been talking about this is, it's always been small, incremental stage. Isn't it just the nature of this particular science that this is how it's gonna be, and ...<br /> <br /> S: It's the nature of many sciences. But Evan brings up a good point too, Bob. We may never have that one advance that gives us the 10 time improvement, the order of magnitude. It may be we just need the 2 to 3 times advance that's actually really good when you think about it. And you stack a few of those together, and then you're there. You know?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's fine. But, hey, we can speed up those incremental advances, can't we?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right?<br /> <br /> === Ray Comfort's Gravity Gaffe &lt;small&gt;(18:13)&lt;/small&gt; === <br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ray-comforts-gravity-gaffe<br /> <br /> <br /> S: But, Evan, do you think {{w|Ray Comfort}} can wrap his head around advances in battery and solar technology?<br /> <br /> B: Nice.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, are you kidding? He is Mr. Science. Move over, {{w|Bill Nye}}; get out of the way {{w|Neil DeGrasse Tyson}}; Ray Comfort is here! Evangelical Minister, author, video producer, perhaps best known for the so-called [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Banana_fallacy banana falacy], in which he claimed that the perfection of the design of the banana is an example of God's hand in creation. Yes.<br /> <br /> B: Too bad &lt;I&gt;we&lt;/I&gt; designed the {{w|Cavendish banana subgroup|Cavendish banana}}.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Irrelevant! Not in the Bible.<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: So, on July 26th, he threw this pearl of wisdom before his swine - (Bob laughs) - his Facebook readers. &quot;If the Bible isn't God-inspired, explain why ... how the writer of the {{w|Book of Job}} knew 3000 years ago that, 'The Earth hangs upon nothing.'&quot; And that's Job, chapter 26, verse 7? Is that how that works?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> E: And then he writes, &quot;It wasn't until thousands of years later that science discovered that gravity doesn't exist in space, and that this massive Earth does indeed hang upon nothing.&quot; He later went back and revised that a bit to read, that gravity doesn't exist in space as it does on Earth, and that this massive Earth does, indeed, hang upon nothing. So, essentially he kind of said the same thing.<br /> <br /> You know what this reminded me? So, remember those old commercials from the 70's for {{w|E. F. Hutton &amp; Co.|E.F. Hutton}}? Right?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen. So, I'm gonna borrow that, and say, &quot;When Ray Comfort talks about science, skeptics listen, and then correct him!&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Not before laughing.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly. You have to laugh at first about this stuff, and then you can get serious. I laughed when I read one Twitterer who put this out there. He said, &quot;First of all, the Earth doesn't hang, for a start. It's not the bloody family portrait.&quot; (Laughs) Which, I love that picture about, that's exactly ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's a Christmas ornament!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Exactly, right?<br /> <br /> B: It's! In! Orbit!<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Yeah, and you can't help yourself. Anywhere you start with this, you're gonna wind up correcting him, so there's really nowhere to go wrong here. So, {{w|Gravitation|gravity}} is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. It's one of the four {{w|Fundamental interaction|fundamental forces}} of nature along with {{w|electromagnetism}}, and the nuclear {{w|Strong interaction|strong force}}, and the {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}! And the phenomenon of gravitation is a consequence of the curvature of {{w|spacetime}}.<br /> <br /> Ray Comfort was under the impression that there's no gravity in space, hense the reason why astronauts appear to float around as they do. But there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; gravity throughout the universe, right? The entire {{w|Observable universe|visible universe}} has revealed the wonders of gravity in all of space and time, and there's just boatloads of evidence to support it.<br /> <br /> B: Right, the entire structure of the known universe is basically authored by gravity. It's the most far-reaching force there is! It's like, hello!<br /> <br /> E: So, obviously, a lot of people chimed in on this, both supporters of his, and people who actually understand science, in making legitimate attempts to correct him. You know, amongst the giggles and things.<br /> <br /> So, he went ahead and corrected himself, a few hours later. Basically, here's what he said, &quot;Up until today, I was one of the many who believe there's zero gravity in space. We live and learn. Thanks to the many {{w|atheism|atheists}} who kindly corrected me.&quot; But then, he actually goes on by also saying, &quot;{{w|Isaac Newton|Sir Isaac Newton}} is the one -&quot; I'm cutting this short because it's kind of a long post. But he writes, &quot;Sir Isaac Newton is the one who so wisely noted atheism is so senseless. I will therefore try to make it a little clearer for those folks who pretend that God doesn't exist. While there is invisible gravity in space -so much for seeing is believing – this massive Earth hangs on nothing. It has no visible means of support, similar to the no means of support backing {{w|Darwinism|Darwinian evolution}}.&quot;<br /> <br /> S: He was wrong, but he's still right! Even though he was completely wrong. It's just unbelievable. It's astounding. He is absolutely {{w|Scientific literacy|scientifcally illiterate}}. I think we could state that without fearing contradiction.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Very kind.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, he thought there was no gravity in space. You have to have absolutely no effing idea what's going on if you think that. You don't understand the first thing about physics and astronomy, right? And it's fine if somebody's not interested in science, and just doesn't have any idea about things like that, the {{w|Sherri Shepherd|Sherri Shepherds}} of the world, but he takes it a step further. In his abject ignorance of science, he uses that as a basis in order to critize ...<br /> <br /> J: To speculate! He's speculating without any ...<br /> <br /> S: No, not speculating, Jay! He's saying definitively, &quot;Hey! If the Bible isn't inspired by God, explain &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; atheists!&quot; But he's talking totally about his own complete, abject, scientific illiteracy.<br /> <br /> J: And clearly, he's unmoved, when he finds out what the truth is, like we said. No effect! Sorry! Doesn't care. That's the infuriating part of it. Okay, so, he starts off wrong. Okay, he's wrong. Then a lot of people showed him, &quot;This is what the truth is,&quot; and then he finally swallowed that, and then ... doesn't care! Didn't affect him in any way!<br /> <br /> S: Because he's not basing his beliefs on facts or logic or evidence or anything. He's {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} facts that appear to support his position. And when that's wrong, that doesn't matter! He'll just cherry pick &lt;I&gt;other&lt;/I&gt; facts. Like, he went on, &quot;Oh yeah! But gravity's invisible! So much for seeing is believing!&quot; What! It's a total {{w|Non sequitur (logic)|non sequitur}}. Even just, his interpretation of the Job passage, &quot;The Earth hangs upon nothing.&quot; That's meaningless.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> S: It doesn't even have any scientific meaning. It was written by somebody who didn't know the first thing about cosmology or physics, or astronomy.<br /> <br /> E: I liken him taking the Job quote so far out of context, this is the same way the things {{w|Nostradamus}} &quot;predicted&quot; way back when, and applying that to modern times is, there's no connection whatsoever! They have no idea basically ...<br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Feathers &lt;small&gt;(24:17)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/most-dinosaurs-may-have-had-feathers<br /> <br /> S: To finish up the news items, just two quick topics on dinosaurs. I love talking about dinosaurs. The first one has to do with how many dinosaurs probably had feathers. This has been a very fascinating story from our childhood. Rebecca, I think even you, when you were a kid, right, dinosaurs had tough, leathery skin, right? You never saw dinosaurs with feathers.<br /> <br /> But, of course, since really, {{w|Archaeopteryx}}, over a hundred years ago, the idea was that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Archeopteryx looks pretty much half dinosaur, half bird. Since then, especially since the 1980's, we've discovered a lot of feathered dinosaurs, so it wasn't just this one feathered half dinosaur, there was an entire clade, a group, of dinosaurs like {{w|Velociraptor|Velociraptors}}, etcetera, that had feathers of some type, as well as different flying dinosaurs, and other ones that had feathers but couldn't fly, and primitive birds; it's really been fleshed out tremendously.<br /> <br /> But the question remains, is how far back in the dinosaur evolutionary history do feathers go? Feathered dinosaurs are mainly found among the {{w|Theropoda|Theropods}}, which are in the branch of dinosaurs called the {{w|Sauropoda|Sauricians}} – which, ironically means lizard-hipped – whereas the other branch of dinosaurs, the ones that did not give rise to the birds, are the {{w|Ornithopod|ornathicians}}, which means bird-hip.<br /> <br /> B: Ha!<br /> <br /> S: But, in any case...<br /> <br /> B: How ironic is that?<br /> <br /> S: The theropods are the feathered dinosaurs. So, pretty much, at this point, we can say most theropod dinosaurs probably had feathers at some point in their life, even if it was just {{w|Down feather|downy feathers}} as young, and they may not have survived until adulthood.<br /> <br /> But recently, scientists have discovered what look like primitive feather impressions on the fossil of a neo-ornathician dinosaur. In other words, from the other main group of dinosaurs. The common anscestor of the ornathicians and the sauricians is basically the common anscestor of all dinosaurs. Now, do you understand the implication of that?<br /> <br /> J: No!<br /> <br /> E: We have to rename dinosaurs.<br /> <br /> S: It means that all dinosaurs may have had feathers, every single dinosaur ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: It may actually go all the way back to the early days of the dinosaurs ...<br /> <br /> J: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a clade.<br /> <br /> B: That's amazing. Did anybody ever even come close to even predicting this?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's incredible.<br /> <br /> B: That's fantastic.<br /> <br /> S: So, this is one fossil, I have to always say. We hate to .. you don't want to hang your hat on one piece of evidence. So, it would be nice if we could find other fossils. It's possible that these feathery filaments were only exist in a juvenile, and not adults. So, it may be that all dinosaurs had down as chicks, as baby dinosaurs, but not as adults. But still, the idea that a feather-like {{w|Integument|integumentary}} adaptation is common to most or all dinosaurs is amazing. So, if this holds up, if this turns out to be the case, that would be fascinating.<br /> <br /> B: And also, Steve, weren't some of the feathers ... were unique. I mean, these are feathers they had never seen before.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Completely, very different structure, whatever. And also, the article, the research I read made a good comparison. They said all dinosaurs had some type of feather, just like all mammals have some type of hair, which is a nice comparison. But, they also made an interesting point. I mean, you look at an elephant - and an elephant's a mammal - not much hair going on on an elephant. There is some.<br /> <br /> So they think for the largest predators, they probably had very, very sparse feathers, if any, really, at all. Which makes sense, because they don't really need them for temperature control. So, I wouldn't run around thinking that, oh, {{w|Tyrannosaurus|T-Rexes}} were running around with feathers everywhere, type of thing. But who knows?<br /> <br /> S: But, it does mean that there is this potential for feather-like structures in dinosaurs as an entire clade ...<br /> <br /> B: Right.<br /> <br /> S: And think about that. So, this is getting back to the whole evidence for evolution thing. If evolution were not true, what are the odds that the group that are anatomically birds probably derived from, also had the widespread potential to grow feather-like structures? This is exactly the kind of thing you would predict from evolution. And there's absolutely no reason for it without evolution as a unifying theory.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah. Steve, I know that these dinosaurs, what they found, these fossils are very special because I think they died in a lake bed, and they were very quickly covered up with a light volcanic silt, or whatever. So, that's why the resolution is so fine. But still, I can't help but thinking, &quot;You know, how many fossils have we dug up, and there was no hint of any type of feather structures on any of the big boys that all these thousands ...&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, for feather impressions, you need the right kind of conditions as you were saying, Bob. So this is, it may be a rare window. So, we just have to hope ... and also, this dinosaur was found outside of China, so it's the first feathered dinosaur found outside of China, which is also important. So, if we find more in various groups, and in various locations around the world. The more we find, the more evidence there is that really, all dinosaurs had some kind of potential for feathers. Or, you know, when we say, &quot;feathers,&quot; these could all just be monofilaments. They're not necessarily the fully-formed shafted feather that we ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, okay.<br /> <br /> J: So you consider it an early feather, then, right?<br /> <br /> S: Like a downy feather, oh yeah. Or, it's also probably not on, saying, &quot;early&quot; implies that it later evolved into a bird-like feather, but it probably didn't. You know what I mean? This is in a completely separate branch. These monofilaments probably never became anything that you would think of as a feather. But it's clearly a feather-like appendage, or structure. <br /> <br /> === Dinosaur Extinction &lt;small&gt;(30:28)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dinosaur-extinction-revisited/<br /> <br /> S: The other dinosaur news item, this is another topic about, which I have been fascinated ever since I was a child. And that is, what wiped out the dinosaurs? Now, everybody knows the answer to this, right? What killed off the dinosaurs?<br /> <br /> R: Inability to brush their teeth, 'cause of their tiny, tiny arms.<br /> <br /> S: (Suppresses laughter) Right, exactly. The {{w|Chixulub crater}} asteroid from 66 million years ago<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's what I said.<br /> <br /> S: at the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary. So, there's no question that 66 million years ago, a huge meteor – or a {{w|bolide}}, as they call it – whacked into the Earth at Chixulub ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wait, Steve. Sorry, Steve. Now, bolide, isn't that a more generic term that can account for {{w|Asteroid|asteroids}} &lt;I&gt;and&lt;/I&gt; {{w|Comet|comets}}?<br /> <br /> S: Yes, because they don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, alright.<br /> <br /> S: They don't know, it was a bolide. They don't really know it was a meteor.<br /> <br /> E: And you didn't call it the K-T boundary, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: It's no longer the K-T boundary. Now it's the K-Pg extinction for {{w|Paleogene}}.<br /> <br /> J: And why didn't they send me an email when they changed that?<br /> <br /> S: I know, right? I didn't get the memo either; I just had to read it. So, anyway, it's actually more of a controversy than I was aware of until maybe a couple of years ago. I started to realize this is actually a little more controversial, that the meteor impact 66 million years ago was pretty much the main cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Paleontology|paleontologists}} are still debating among themselves whether or not dinosaurs as a group were already on the way out. One question is did the dinosaurs survive past the K-Pg boundary. I think that has been pretty much put to bed, and the answer is no. That no dinosaur survived past the K-Pg boundary. So, clearly, that is the punctuation mark at the end of dinosaurs' time on Earth. But the question is, were they already in decline, and on their way out, and was the asteroid or the bolide just the {{w|Coup de grâce|coup de grâce}}, that it was the final blow that wiped them out.<br /> <br /> B: That's the essense of the controversy right there.<br /> <br /> S: That's the controversy, that's it. Was it solely responsible, or was it just one among many factors. The other factors that paleontologists discuss are, 1, there were fluctuating sea levels at that time; 2, there was a fluctuating climate at that time in terms of the temperature of the Earth; and 3, and probably the biggest one, is the volcanism and the {{w|Deccan Traps}} located in India. They were massively volcanically active; poisoning the atmosphere, changing the climate; and that could put a lot of stress on dinosaurs and other large animals at the time.<br /> <br /> So, remember at the K-Pg extinction, all large {{w|Vertebrate}} groups, dinosaurs, {{w|Pleisiosauria|Pleisiosaurs}}, {{w|Mosasaur|mosasaurs}}, and {{w|Pterosaur|Pterosaurs}} went extinct, as did many species of {{w|Plankton}}, tropical invertebrates, and reef dwellers. So, it was a widespread extinction. {{w|Mammal|Mammals}}, birds, and insects actually did quite well. They did fine.<br /> <br /> It definitely wasn't something that was unique to dinosaurs. The reason we're talking about this now is a recent review of all existing evidence, trying to address this specific question of were the dinosaurs in decline prior to the meteor impact. And the answer to that is mostly no. A careful review of the evidence shows that there essentially is no significant scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the dinosaurs were in decline at the time the meteor hit. And, therefore, the meteor probably the primary, if not the sole cause of the dinosaur extinction.<br /> <br /> B: That's good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah,<br /> <br /> B: I like it.<br /> <br /> S: What you thought all along turns out to be true, and you can now comfortably ignore this controversy you didn't know about. But, the authors do hold out one tiny little exception.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god, what now?<br /> <br /> J: Oh boy!<br /> <br /> S: There was a slight decline in the species richness of North American ornithicians, but not therapods. So, there was a regional decline in one type of dinosaurs, mainly plant-eaters, the ornithicians. And they said, &quot;Maybe that made dinosaurs more vulnerable to extinction – to the collapse of their ecosystem.&quot;<br /> <br /> So, what's interesting is that that one tiny, little speculation is what the media ran with. And the headlines – even on sites that are normally very good, like {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature News}}, and the {{w|BBC}} – are reporting it as, &quot;The dinosaurs died because of bad luck.&quot; One even said that if the meteor had hit several million years earlier or later, the dinosaurs would have survived. That is &lt;I&gt;not&lt;/I&gt; what the paper concludes.<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: The paper concludes there was basically no decline in dinosaurs, and the meteor wiped them out. And then there was this one little, &quot;Yeah, okay, but the ornithicians were a little bit in decline in North America only, and maybe that made them more vulnerable. We see this pattern all the time, this ... half of what caught my interest with this story because I read the headline, I'm like, &quot;Wow! Really? That's pretty unusual.&quot; And then I read the paper, it's like, &quot;The paper's not saying this!&quot;<br /> <br /> The main evidence is not what the headlines go for. They pick out some little, tiny, little post script, but that's the thing that has the sexy headline. The dinosaurs died from bad luck! <br /> <br /> B: Holy crap!<br /> <br /> E: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> B: That's pathetic. Fail!<br /> <br /> S: Total fail. Total fail reporting this story. Just the way it gets translated is just unbelievable. And you know, it also shows, you gotta go ... if I just read the press releases, that's the impression I would have walked away with. But you got to go to the original source. You read the paper, and it's like ... I read the whole paper. Because the paper actually is fascinating.<br /> <br /> Anyone who's interested in this topic, the controversy over the extinction of the dinosaurs, this paper is an awesome primer. It goes over everything really well. And then in the discussion, it's very clear, that other than this one tiny exception, the evidence does not support any kind of general decline in dinosaurs as a group prior to the impact of the meteor.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(36:51)&lt;/small&gt;==<br /> * Answer to last week: Dot Matrix Printer<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Evan, Who's that Noisy?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, last week's Who's the Noisy, you remember this little tune? Remember this little turn? Remember this? Yeah.<br /> <br /> (Scratchy sound playing {{w|Eye of the Tiger}})<br /> <br /> S: Heh, that's awesome.<br /> <br /> J: Hey, Evan, can I ask you a question?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, sir.<br /> <br /> J: When we recorded the show last week, did I guess correctly?<br /> <br /> E: Jay, you did guess correctly. You were the first one!<br /> <br /> B: Jay, it seemso obvious now. (Laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Jay, tell us what that was!<br /> <br /> J: Tell us what you've what? That is the old {{w|Dot matrix printing|dot matrix printers}}.<br /> <br /> E: Remember those, dot matrix!<br /> <br /> J: Yes, so the drum beat is the actual feed of the paper. And then the notes, somebody figured out, I guess, a way to print different things with it, you can get different frequencies out of it.<br /> <br /> S: You could watch the whole thing on [http://youtu.be/u8I6qt_Z0Cg YouTube]<br /> <br /> J: Oh, okay. I didn't do that. I didn't cheat.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I mean, after Evan confirmed that, yes, it was a dot-matrix printer, I watched the whole thing on YouTube, and you could see what it's printing. You know, it's just dots. It's not text or anything.<br /> <br /> J: Really?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: A dot-matrix printer?<br /> <br /> S: It does the whole song really well. It's very funny to watch.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> E: It is, and of course, you know, these things are not purposed to create music or stuff. But, hey, give people toys or technology, and they'll do all sorts of things with it that it wasn't supposed to do, though!<br /> <br /> S: They have far too much time on their hands.<br /> <br /> E: I suppose, so ...<br /> <br /> B: I love people like that! I love 'em!<br /> <br /> E: And it generated a ton of email, people having enjoyed that, realizing exactly what it was, expressing their own little comments about it, it was really cool to read. I spent a lot of time this week, 'cause there were hundreds of correct answers. But there can only be one winner each week. Rob McDermit, your name was chosen. Congratulations, you are this week's winner.<br /> <br /> And I want to send out a thank you to Liam Bond, who's also a listener, who actually sent me the link for this particular noisy, from last week. So, thank you, Liam. I appreciate that.<br /> <br /> S: Awesome. What do you got for this week?<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this week, here's a voice you may recognize. You might not, but it's interesting nonetheless. Here we go.<br /> <br /> ?: (Male voice) I went nuts! I just didn't know what happened. I just lost it, and I just became a poor actor in New York. Like being a star student at {{w|Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT}}. I don't know. You tell me. I just ... crazy, I suppose. Swedish ... I don't know how to explain it.<br /> <br /> E: And, go ahead and submit your answer. Correct or not, we don't care. We want to hear from you. WTN@theskepticsguide.org is our email address. Or you can go ahead and post it on our forums, [http://sguforums.com sguforums.com]. Look for the sub thread called Who's that Noisy for episode 473. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, Evan.<br /> <br /> == Interview With Bill Nye &lt;small&gt;(41:37)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * http://billnye.com/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, we recorded a really fun interview with Bill Nye the Science Guy while we were at {{w|The Amaz!ng Meeting|TAM}}. So, we're gonna play some of that interview for you now!<br /> <br /> (Music plays)<br /> <br /> S: We're here at TAM 2014, and it's our distinct pleasure to have with us back again, Bill Nye, the Science Guy! Bill, welcome back to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> BN: It's so good to be back.<br /> <br /> S: So, Bill, I asked you before we started if you wouldn't mind if we asked you about the {{w|Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate|Ham debate}}. I'm sure everyone's asking you about that. So, tell us how you feel. How did that go? Would you do it again? What do you think?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, it went great, for me, or us. I don't think I'd do it again because I don't know how much more ground there is to cover. However, I remind us that the audience is not Ken Ham, or Ken Ham's congregation, or ministry, as he calls it. The audience is everybody on the web. So, 3 and a half million views. And that's seriously, that's just in the first – what's it been – four months. It'll, I presume, just keep getting bigger and bigger.<br /> <br /> Everywhere I go, people watched it! I'm getting my shoes shined today in the {{w|McCarran International Airport|McCarran Airport}}. This guy, through a half dozen people. &quot;Loved the debate, man!&quot; People I've not dealt with yet are, &quot;I hate you! You suck!&quot; And they're coming. But I haven't met many of them yet.<br /> <br /> S: I think that – we all watched the debate, of course – I mean, we ...<br /> <br /> J: It was so cool!<br /> <br /> S: It was cool!<br /> <br /> BN: It's so nice of you guys!<br /> <br /> B: It was an event! Come on!<br /> <br /> S: I love debates. I mean, personally. A lot of people in our movement are really shy about debates, but I think they're great. So, you did a fabulous job. I think, what you did really well, to be honest with you, was you just stuck to science communicating, and you just told the science end of the spectrum really well. And I think that might have, in the end ... I think some people were worried you weren't addressing Ham's points, but he doesn't really have any points.<br /> <br /> BN: I was gonna say, what is it beyond that he's got a book?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: Right, right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you're better off just saying, this is the science, and isn't it cool, and let's all really be enthusiastic about science. And maybe that was actually the best approach to go.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I thought the most important thing, as I will say today many times, you may be right, if I'm not right. The most important thing is to keep your cool. Keep my cool. Because these guys say such extraordinary things. It's just ...<br /> <br /> S: Easy to lose your head.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah!<br /> <br /> E: Bill, how did you prepare for the debate?<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, that's a great question. And thank you for asking.<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> BN: So, first of all, I was overconfident. Then I got to thinking about it, and I was terrified.<br /> <br /> (Loud laughter)<br /> <br /> B: It's probably healthy.<br /> <br /> BN: Then, I went to see {{w|Eugenie Scott}}, and you guys know [http://ncse.com/users/josh Josh Rosenau]? He's the second in command there.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Oh, okay, alright.<br /> <br /> BN: He's the head of resear- he's very good. And they really coached me, along with several other people from {{w|National Center for Science Education}}.<br /> <br /> S: 'Genie's not a guy, by the way. She's here.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, and I want to see her talk! Or hear her ... Wait, I'll do both. (Rogues laugh) So she really coached me. And then, do you guys know {{w|Donald Prothero|Don Prothero}}?<br /> <br /> E: Oh, absolutely, yes. Good man.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I made good. I told him I'd buy him dinner; and I bought him dinner night before last. He really helped out. And {{w|Michael Shermer}}. We met for lunch at Michael's house, and those people really coached me. And then I did some research. I mean I spent a little time. And one thing has led to another, and I'm writing a book. I mean, I've written a book. 89,000 words. And it comes out the first week of November.<br /> <br /> J: This is about the whole experience.<br /> <br /> BN: It's about, nah, it's just called, &quot;Evolution: The Science of Creation.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Ooh! That's a great title!<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, I'll show ya.<br /> <br /> E: Nice turn.<br /> <br /> BN: In my slide show – it's all about me-e-e. (Rogues laugh) I have the cover, which I got yesterday, Thursday. I got, they sent the latest version of the cover. It's a JPEG.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: So, this is really exciting, but I mention this for me, for us, we have this whole thing. We're always preaching to the choir. But don't you feel like it's growing?<br /> <br /> E: Yes, no question.<br /> <br /> S: I don't like the term &quot;preaching to the choir.&quot; We're educating people who are interested in science and critical thinking.<br /> <br /> BN: And the other thing is, this thing that we all humans are so kooky for, it's a community. That's what TAM's all about, right? Like, you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking? Wow! What a relief, right? As I say, this wouldn't matter except for kids. By kids, I mean students, science students. And that's why it's really important to me. We cannot raise a generation of students who are scientifcally illiterate, and without critical thinking skill, and so I feel that that debate really has done that. Now, a lot of people thought I shouldn't do it.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a lot of skeptics said it.<br /> <br /> E: Because there's reasons why. We've seen historical instances in which the {{w|Duane_Gish#Debates|Gish Gallop has been employed by some of these people, and they run roughshod over.<br /> <br /> BN: Let me just ask you guys, because it is all about...<br /> <br /> B: We don't deny that! We agree with you with that.<br /> <br /> BN: What did I not screw up? I mean, I did it the way I was gonna do it.<br /> <br /> S: My take was what I said already. It was one strategy to just ignore him, and just to make the case for science and evolution. That's actually a good strategy, because once you're on the defensive, you lose because he can create misconceptions in seconds that would take you dozens of minutes to correct. So just forget him.<br /> <br /> So that's one approach. It's kind of like the non-debate debate. The art of fighting without fighting.<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: So ... I also totally agree, because I get this question a lot. I'm just in the middle of a debate with a {{w|9/11 Truth movement|9/11 Truther}}. He'd be like, &quot;Why are you doing this?&quot; Like, &quot;He's not the audience! I don't care about him. I am talking to people who want information, who are on the fence who will be helped by this. And I'm gonna teach them some critical thinking and facts!<br /> <br /> BN: Or just the doubt's introduced to their minds. That's the big thing.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, the one thing our listeners will be very upset about if we don't bring this up, though. The one criticism that does come up is, &quot;But Ham exploited this to raise money for his ...&quot;<br /> <br /> BN: Here's my claim.<br /> <br /> S: You tell me.<br /> <br /> BN: It's not over yet.<br /> <br /> S: Okay.<br /> <br /> BN: So, he held an online press conference. I don't know if you guys watched that.<br /> <br /> E: I didn't.<br /> <br /> BN: And there's no members of the press at a press conference in {{w|Answers in Genesis}}, it's all their own guys.<br /> <br /> B: Is that afterwards, or before?<br /> <br /> BN: Afterwards, weeks later. So, two things. I got a letter saying that the debate did not influence it at all from a Mark Looy, who's second in command at Answers in ... maybe he's actually the head of Answers in Genesis. And saying it had no influence at all. And then they had this press conference saying it was the wind that blew ... but journalists in {{w|Kentucky}} are looking hard into this. They're trying to follow the money. And I have heard two people who've looked at the {{w|Irs_tax_forms#Fiduciary_reporting|990's}}, you know what I mean?<br /> <br /> Now, this is hearsay, you guys, this is the worst form of evidence. But he may – and this is may, not verified yet, they are trying to find out – but he may have leveraged the loan for the Arc Park against the {{w|Creation Museum}}, and you know, his attendance is going down.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: Because it's generally believed that his attendance is going down because he doesn't have new exhibits. This is in museum talk. So, what I did, you guys, I didn't give money to (inaudible), but I took the money from the debate, and I gave it to a planetary society.<br /> <br /> E: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: And I also gave it to the Kentucky Museum of Science, or maybe it's called {{w|Kentucky Science Center|Kentucky Children's Museum}}, and the {{w|Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal|Cincinnati Museum of Science}}. You know, trying to bracket him. So, it's not ... in other words, I will say, in the short term, you may be right. But in the medium term, I think he's gonna have a lot of trouble.<br /> <br /> E: The final reckoning is not in yet.<br /> <br /> BN: That's right.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's only June of the first few months, people!<br /> <br /> (Laughter)<br /> <br /> S: That's long though, attention span, for the public.<br /> <br /> BN: What'd you say? I'm sorry.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Gotcha for a second.<br /> <br /> BN: Hilarious!<br /> <br /> J: My only critique, is that you could have structured the debate to handle one or two topics, and had a moderator keep people on topic, which ... but I totally agree with Steve. After watching the debate, we were ... definitely more than once, you did such a good job, of just being ...<br /> <br /> E: Love you man!<br /> <br /> J: Well, you insulated yourself! You were immune to him just going off on these insane tangents <br /> <br /> BN: He was galloping gishy wash.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: He was trying, he tried. But overall, I just had a conversation with people an hour ago about this. What was the net result? I'm not sure. I don't know.<br /> <br /> S: It's hard to measure, but ...<br /> <br /> J: It is hard to measure.<br /> <br /> S: I certainly think I encountered a lot of people who like, excited about science because I saw you on that debate.<br /> <br /> BN: That's so nice!<br /> <br /> S: That's a win!<br /> <br /> BN: I've met several science teachers, and of course, this is a self-selecting group, who use it in class. They say they've played it in class, this spring.<br /> <br /> E: Wow!<br /> <br /> BN: Wow, yeah. That was not the plan. Cool.<br /> <br /> B: Have you guys seen ... they had pictures of people holding up these goofy questions. I think they were people that were actually at the event, and they wrote questions, trying to explain, &quot;Hey, Bill! What do you say about &lt;I&gt;this&lt;/I&gt; type of thing.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio 22 Questions for Bill Nye]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: If we're descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ...<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> B: Right, that's a perfect example!<br /> <br /> BN: What purpose to monkeys serve, exactly?<br /> <br /> B: So, there was a lot of those pictures, and a lot of websites have been created showing what those people said, and then having somebody else hold another card responding to it, and they were just beautiful lessons on how to deal with ... I know, but it came out of it, and it's just one of the things that I just loved reading and making them look so ridiculous.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.businessinsider.com/22-responses-to-buzzfeeds-22-messages-from-creationists-2014-2 22 Answers for creationists]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> BN: To us. But to his followers ...<br /> <br /> B: Yes, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: Oh yeah. But, so what? Like you said, you didn't convert anyone.<br /> <br /> S: They were all gotcha questions. They were gotcha questions that reveal they don't know anything about the science of evolution.<br /> <br /> BN: It's troubling, because we're the most technologically advanced society – you could say Japan – Finland is very, actually, New Zealand is very good. But this is where the iPhone's designed, right? And yet, we have these people in our midst that have no understanding of where an iPhone comes from, for example.<br /> <br /> J: Or don't even care to question it.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah. So that's why we got ... and the big thing, you guys, for me, the critical issues are climate change and the future of science education, and engineers. So, Ken Ham denies climate change. I mean, that's one of his things. He's doing all he can to indoctrinate young people in that area, Kentucky, mostly.<br /> <br /> E: He may see an income stream from going that approach too. A new revenue stream, yeah, by appealing to the people who deny that climate change is happening.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, I'm sure that they're the same people. I mean, if you were scientifcally aware, you wouldn't ... I don't think you'd give Answers in Genesis any money, would you?<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Probably not.<br /> <br /> B: But speaking of climate change, I saw you on {{w|Last Week Tonight with John Oliver|John Oliver's show}}.<br /> <br /> BN: That was big fun.<br /> <br /> B: And that was fantastic! I just loved it because none of the people actually stress that point, that you can't have the scientific position here, and then a denier here, when there's ... the {{w|false balance}} is ridiculous. And he just brought, like, what, 97 scientists on.<br /> <br /> BN: 96. So I was 97.<br /> <br /> B: Okay, but they were all speaking in this caucophany.<br /> <br /> BN: I just noticed, you guys, what a great thing it was. It's {{w|Mother's Day}}, alright? And these are actors. &quot;Sure! I'll be an extra on Mother's Day. Sure, okay.&quot; (Rogues laugh) Just shows ya, it's a tough business. But everybody was really cool, really gracious, and people were excitied to participate. John Oliver's really come into his own.<br /> <br /> B: Really!<br /> <br /> E: Oh boy.<br /> <br /> B: He's been nailing it on his show.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, humor's a great vehicle for exposing nonsense.<br /> <br /> BN: Well, this business of irony. And there are books written about the nature of laughter, and what you find ironic. And you'll be shocked to learn that what Michael Shermer calls &quot;socially liberal,&quot; - is that what he says? Or is it liberal social? Socially liberal people have a much more highly developed sense of irony. And this is from brain scans. I didn't ... not my thing!<br /> <br /> E: It's not my thing, it's a fact!<br /> <br /> BN: I've been reading this book, &quot;[http://www.amazon.com/Ha-The-Science-When-Laugh/dp/product-description/0465031706 Ha]!&quot; about the nature of laughter, and it's really fascinating.<br /> <br /> J: So, Bill, tell us about the things that you're doing with the government to help affect change.<br /> <br /> BN: The government? Well, just when the White House calls, I show up.<br /> <br /> S: You've got the red phone? The hotline?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, sort of. You may not know, but there's something called the {{w|Office of Science and Technology Policy}}. Somewhat disclosure – a guy who works there was a grad student under the guy who started the Space Policy Institute. So, he'll call me, or text me. Or he'll have somebody call me or text me. And if the President asked you to come to the {{w|White House}} science fair, you show up, sorry man.<br /> <br /> And they said, &quot;{{w|Maker Faire}}&quot;, a few weeks ago, and that was cool. These people make kooky stuff in order, or learning the technology, developing the technology that allows us to make things that were not possible to make. You know, I'm a mechanical engineer, and now we're all into {{w|3D printing|additive manufacturing}}, have you heard this expression?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> BN: There didn't use to be any such thing. There was {{w|lost-wax casting}}.<br /> <br /> E: Right<br /> <br /> BN: Or was, there still is ... and moulding, and stuff. And that's in a sense, additive manufacturing, but not like printing rocket engine nozzels.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, right?<br /> <br /> E: I know!<br /> <br /> J: I know, tell me about it.<br /> <br /> E: Exciting.<br /> <br /> J: I can't believe that.<br /> <br /> BN: It's cool. It's exciting. <br /> <br /> S: How involved are you, at all, as a planetary society, with the Dragon, or other ...<br /> <br /> BN: Oh, so {{w|Elon Musk}} was on our board for many years, or a few years, but he had to recuse himself when he got the government contract for commercial crewed space flight. {{w|SpaceX}} has gotten, this is my memory, but it's right around $500 million, right around half a billion dollars from NASA. And so has Sierra Nevada Space, and another one.<br /> <br /> J: The {{w|Orion (spacecraft)|Orion}}?<br /> <br /> BN: The Orion! Yeah, {{w|Boeing}} has also gotten money. So, the Orion, everybody, is a compromise. But that's the nature of politics.<br /> <br /> S: What do you think? What's the bottom line? What's your feeling about the Orion? Is that gonna be a useful addition, or is it gonna be a wasteful boondoggle, or somewhere in between?<br /> <br /> BN: I'm on camera, right? We are hopeful that it's very successful.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> S: (Quiet) Yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: No, you guys, you can go to {{w|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station|Cape Canaveral}}, and there is the constellation gantry tower. You know what I mean by this? This thing that holds up a rocket, that was never built because it was underfunded from the get-go, and people presumed, as has happened so often in that past, that once you've got a program started, people will just keep it going no matter what. Space man, this is America. This is what we're gonna do.<br /> <br /> But after a while, somebody said, &quot;Wait, you're way off in your budget. You're just too far off.&quot; And Orion's what's left over from that.<br /> <br /> J: And it's actually derivative of a few different attempts, right?<br /> <br /> BN: Well, everybody, it's fairly popular when you run for President, if you guys go that route, to say we're gonna go to the {{w|Moon}}. It's really popular to say we're gonna go to {{w|Mars}}. But the scale of it, as this guy we work with – we have a lobbyist at the Planetary Society. He says these people in {{w|United States Congress|Congress}} think it's {{w|Pepsi}} or {{w|Coca-Cola|Coke}}, the Moon or Mars.<br /> <br /> No, one's three days, the other is three years. Keeping people alive for three years in deep space with radioation, with no gravity, it's just not so trivial. Not so easy.<br /> <br /> E: All kinds of problems.<br /> <br /> J: Keeping them from going crazy in a spaceship for three years is a challenge.<br /> <br /> BN: So, I didn't write this joke; it was told to me by Congressman {{w|Adam Schiff}}, who, his district used to include JPL,{{w|Jet Propulsion Laboratory| Jet Propulsion Lab}}. Now it doesn't, it's {{w|Judy Chu}}, but now, it still includes {{w|California Institute of Technology|Caltech}}, so he's in that {{w|Pasadena, California|Pasedena}} space community.<br /> <br /> Alright, so they send this mission to Mars that's auto-return. What's it called, Mars Frontier? Anyway, it's a husband and wife that are of an age where they can no longer have children. So they fly out – and this will be possible in the year 2018. There's an automatic return if you get the trajectory just so, the orbit of Mars will sling you right back to Earth. So, you won't land, you'll just woo-o-o, come back. Take pictures, and I guess we (Inaudible).<br /> <br /> So, in the context of this joke, gentlemen, the spacecraft and everything's going well, but on the way back, suddenly there's no communication. There's no words from the thing. It automatically gets in orbit around the Earth, no communication. They go up with another spacecraft, and look in the window, and both the husband and wife have been dismembered, been torn limb from limb. How is this possible? And then, Adam Schiff says, &quot;Well, you've never been married.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, to your point, this is a very serious concern. 400 days with the same people in a room as big as this table. There's some trouble.<br /> <br /> E: People are still people.<br /> <br /> B: To me, the biggest problem is the radiation that you would encounter. No one has any .. is anyone addressing that?<br /> <br /> BN: Yep, well people<br /> <br /> B: Is it a deal breaker?<br /> <br /> BN: ... argue the radiation is not that strong.<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> BN: But I'm not sure that's true. And so, by the way, changing it back to ... and the Planetary Society, we hope, again, to launch, to fly, this thing called the {{w|Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment}}. Did you hear about that? LIFE? So, it's a titanium puck with several microbes that are very well characterized and purified, and properly freeze-dried, and some water bears, the {{w|Tardigrade|tardigrades}}.<br /> <br /> B: Tardigrades, they're awesome! They're incredible.<br /> <br /> E: Good innovation!<br /> <br /> J: You're gonna see if they're gonna die?<br /> <br /> BN: I can't see under the table? And then we'd send them, we were gonna send them to Phobos and back, the moon of Mars. But, it crashed. It was a Russian rocket. {{w|Fobos Grunt}}, it was called. Grunt is Russian, my understanding, is Russian for soil. Anyway, it was gonna scoop up some {{w|Phobos (moon)|Phobos}}, but it crashed in the {{w|Pacific Ocean}}.<br /> <br /> So, we might get a chance to fly that again. And, to your point, we'll see if they can take this radiation. Then, presumably, they'd come back, and we'd light 'em up again, put warm water on them and see what happens. So, what are the questions? Do you know radiodurans?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Deinococcus radiodurans|Radiodurans}}! {{w|Extremophile}}! Right? It's my favourite {{w|microorganism}}.<br /> <br /> BN: Yeah, way to go.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> BN: So, why does that bacterium have the capability to withstand radiation? This is a cool, evolutionary ...<br /> <br /> J: Does it absorb it?<br /> <br /> B: No, it blows apart the {{w|DNA}}, and it can reform. It's amazing stuff. Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: It's also partly that it's simplified its DNA as much as possible, so there are fewer opportunities for it being destroyed.<br /> <br /> BN: No, but here's the thing. Here's what we love to be charmed by in {{w|astrobiology}}, not quite science fiction, thinking out louding, is maybe Mars was hit by an impactor 3 billion years ago. A living thing got into space on a meteorite before it became a meteorite, and just in 17,000 quick years, in a home in orbit, it made its way to the Earth, and we are all ...<br /> <br /> E: So we are all Martians.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Panspermia}}, yeah.<br /> <br /> BN: It's just a cool thing to wonder about, and it's a wonderful thing to investigate. We have the capability. This generation of people, to send the right spacecraft there and look into that question more carefully. I mean, if we were to discover evidence of life on Mars, it would change the world!<br /> <br /> J: Say it.<br /> <br /> E: (Accent) Change the world!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:03:06)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Item #1]: A recently published analysis indicates that, if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20-40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> [http://blogs.chapman.edu/press-room/2014/07/23/the-quantum-cheshire-cat-can-a-particle-be-separated-from-its-properties/ Item #2]: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself, so the particle was in one location while its magnetic moment was in another.<br /> [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uoia-pun072814.php Item #3]: Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity, in an indium alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real, and one fake. Then I ask my expert skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Are you guys ready for this week?<br /> <br /> R: We have a theme this week.<br /> <br /> E: Oh yeah. As ready as last week.<br /> <br /> S: Nah, there's no real theme this week.<br /> <br /> R: Ah, okay.<br /> <br /> S: No theme. Okay, here we go: Item #1: A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 – 40% of the world will have serious {{w|Water scarcity|water shortage}} by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040.<br /> <br /> Item #2: Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So the particle was in one location while its {{w|magnetic moment}} was in another. And Item #3: Researchers have successfully created {{w|Cooper pair|Cooper pairs}}, the hallmark of {{w|superconductivity}} in an {{w|Indium}} alloy at near room temperature.<br /> <br /> R: What!<br /> <br /> E: You heard him.<br /> <br /> R: Why couldn't there have been a theme, and the theme was {{w|Cheetah|cheetahs}}, or {{w|Sloth|sloths}}?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, cuddly animals or ...<br /> <br /> R: Instead, the theme is shit Rebecca doesn't know! Again! I'm getting sick of this, Steve.<br /> <br /> E: Things that go meow.<br /> <br /> B: I don't mind!<br /> <br /> R: Ugh! Bob, go first.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, Bob is going last. Evan, you go first.<br /> <br /> R: Ugh!<br /> <br /> E: Okay. Steve, I'm gonna start with the first one, in which you wrote, &quot;A recently published analysis indicates that blah, blah, blah,&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yes.<br /> <br /> E: Exactly!<br /> <br /> S: Yada yada<br /> <br /> E: If we continue our current mix of electricity generation, okay, I buy that. 20 – 40% of the world will have serious water shortage! Okay, why is that? By 2020? And there'll be a global water shortage by 2040? I don't know. This smacks of other things we've kind of heard about in the past, in which these sorts of predictions are made, and they don't always turn out to, I think, be as serious as this. That's not to say it's not a serious issue, but these things tend to get I think, overestimated, and maybe a little over hyped. I don't know if that's one of these.<br /> <br /> Well, moving on to the second one, &quot;Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle.&quot; That's mind boggling, frankly. I don't think there's any other way to put it. Particle was in one location. It's magnetic moment (laughs) was in another. Oh, I've never heard that term, &quot;Magnetic moment,&quot; before.<br /> <br /> J: I know! I thought that was odd.<br /> <br /> B: Where you been?<br /> <br /> E: What? Magnetic moment?<br /> <br /> R: I'm really glad he said that, because I assumed I was the only person who didn't know.<br /> <br /> E: Bob, tell me one time that those words have ever been spoken like that on this show. I can't remember a single time. We've never talked about the magnetic moment of particles, never!<br /> <br /> B: You know, I bet I've mentioned it a couple times in the last 470 episodes.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I bet he has.<br /> <br /> E: Some listener will correct me on that if it's out there, but I frankly, I don't remember.<br /> <br /> B: Frankly, I forget what we talk about last week, dude. Come on.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, this is too wild, I think, to not be true. Why the hell, Steve, would you throw this in here? This is, you're really trying to trip us up here. And how they've done it, who the hell knows? High speed collisions, you know? Whatever.<br /> <br /> The last one, researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs. An indium alloy at near room temperature. &lt;I&gt;In&lt;/I&gt; an indium alloy at near room temperature. Okay. Indium, huh? So, basically, have we actually hit the gold standard here.<br /> <br /> S: The holy grail.<br /> <br /> E: Well, I mean, is this some sort of ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Cold fusion}}?<br /> <br /> E: ... what were we talking about. Cold fusion! Thank you. Kind of thing. It's kid of what we're talking about 'cause of the whole room temperature thing. That seems to be very, very ... I'll go with my gut and say that I think the water shortage one is the fiction. I think there's some merit to it, there's something going on. I think that those estimates are too soon though. We may have a serious problem maybe a hundred years from now, but not 5, 8, one generation from now. I think that's an exaggeration. So, that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Jay.<br /> <br /> J: Okay, this first one, very smart, Steve. This first one about the water, the water shortage. I've read quite a bit about that. I've heard about it. I think I've seen a TV show about the water shortage claims that are coming, and a lot of this hype about, are we shipping all of our water to China, and everything? I don't know.<br /> <br /> I do think though, that there may be some truth in this, but I'm not quite sure that this news item itself is completely true. It seems plausible that we could have water shortages. I just don't know, Steve, the connection here with electricity. I'm a little confused about.<br /> <br /> Okay, the second one about the particle being separated from its magnetic moment. I kind of agree with Evan. It's an oddball item, and it seems to be either that they tried to do it, and they couldn't do it. I just don't see a good fake here.<br /> <br /> This last one, however, I would think that if this happened, the way that Steve is saying it, that there'd be nothing preventing my browser from exploding in my face with news items coming up about room temperature superconductivity. So I'm gonna say that the third one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, Rebecca.<br /> <br /> R: Yeah, that's where I was leaning. The only one of these that I can even really parse is the one about electricity generation and water shortage. And yeah, I do know that there is a connection between those two. I think that it's because nuclear power plants and coal plants too, maybe, require a lot of water for cooling. That one makes sense to me, and, yeah, global water shortage by 2040, that can mean a lot of things. It's kind of vague, what kind of shortage are we talking about? We obviously already have problems with droughts and stuff in parts of the United States, but also, we fly drinking water from Fiji into our Starbucks. So ...<br /> <br /> B: Really?<br /> <br /> R: Yeah! {{w|Fiji}} water? Do you not know about Fiji water? Fiji water literally takes the only potable water in Fiji, and leaves the residents to drink sewage water. Fun times. So (Laughs) yeah. Global water shortage, okay, probably something that majorly affects the developing nations more, but yeah.<br /> <br /> So, I'm going between the other two. I don't know what a magnetic moment is. I assumed it's something like it's position, in space or something. I don't know. Why not? But yeah, the room temperature thing. I was wondering if it was something like cold fusion-esque, and Evan and Jay seem to think so. And so, I think, yeah. If that's what this has to do with, then, yeah, I find that the least believable. So I'm going to go with the Cooper pairs at room temperature being the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: A-a-and, Bob.<br /> <br /> B: Alright, the water shortage, these numbers seem a little dramatic to me. I always heard it's coming. 20 – 40%! You know, 6 years, potentially? Seri ... and 2040 ... what is a global water shortage? How extensive? How global would that be? But I don't have huge problems with that.<br /> <br /> The second one, yeah, {{w|quantum mechanics}} is crazy! Absolutely, I totally buy this. I mean, you talking about things like {{w|Quantum entanglement|entanglement}} and {{w|Quantum superposition|superposition}}, yeah, I could totally see this. It's a little surprising to me, but you gotta just learn to roll with quantum mechanics, unless of course, the claims are pseudoscientific. But, so yeah, that one doesn't surprise me. I really, really hope that's true, 'cause that's fantastic.<br /> <br /> Yeah, I got a problem with the third one. Cooper pairs, come on. Room temperature? No. We're not there yet. And I have to agree with Jay that this would be all over. This would be huge. That's the holy grail, right there! Room temperature. Bet they didn't think of that one!<br /> <br /> I remember first hearing about high temperature superconductivity back, what Steve, '90's? Early '90's? No, late '80's maybe.<br /> <br /> S: Something like that.<br /> <br /> B: And I'm thinking, &quot;Oh boy!&quot; You know, and now, twenty-something, thirty years later, it's still mysterious. So, yeah, I'm just not buying that we've got that yet. I mean, I really hope I'm wrong on this one, but I severely doubt it, so that's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay, well, you all agree with #2, so let's start there. Physicists have successfully separated the properties of a particle from the particle itself. So, the particle was in one place, while it's magnetic moment was in another. You guys all think this one is science ...<br /> <br /> R: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: and this one is ... So you guys don't know what a magnetic moment is?<br /> <br /> R: Well, Bob ... I <br /> <br /> J: I know what it is!<br /> <br /> E: It's when you look across the room, and you stare at that special person in the eyes, and you have a connection that you can't quite explain.<br /> <br /> R: (Singing) This magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so the magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantitiy that determines the torque-able experienced in an external {{w|magnetic field}}.<br /> <br /> B: You are correct, sir!<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, it's basically a propery of the magnetic, it's own magnetism, think about it that way. A bar {{w|magnet}}, an {{w|electron}}, a {{w|molecule}}, and a {{w|planet}} all have magnetic moments. And apparently, so do {{w|neutrons}}. This one is science. And Bob's right. That wacky quantum mechanics can do anything, apparently.<br /> <br /> B: Almost.<br /> <br /> S: Very ...<br /> <br /> R: {{w|Deus ex machina}} of Science or Fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: So, what the scientists did was they used a neutron {{w|Interferometry|interferometer}}. Ever hear of that, Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you take a beam of neutrons, you split them into two paths, or the neutrons could basically take one of two ...<br /> <br /> J: The two paths, I know.<br /> <br /> B: What?<br /> <br /> J: You actually described it pretty well, Steve. Now, taking that to the next step though, when you decouple these {{w|Electric power conversion|power converters}} ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: and you cross phase them through the actual early, early {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} converter type systems.<br /> <br /> B: (Snickering) Java ...<br /> <br /> J: What you get is a semi crossed {{w|Parallax|paralaxed}} {{w|Paralysis|paralyzation}} of the {{w|Coma|comatose}} {{w|Crematory|cremators}}.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> E: Did you get the power converters at {{w|Hitachi station}}?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Technobabble}}!<br /> <br /> S: Right. Now, what really happened was, you could send this beam of neutrons simultaneously down two paths! This is standard quantium mechanics, right?<br /> <br /> J: Are you saying there's two paths you can go down, but in the long run, it's not too late to change the road you're on?<br /> <br /> S: That's correct, because the neutrons can decide later if they went down Path A, or Path B, right? They go down both simultaneously until they interact with something, then they have to choose the path. That's standard quantum mechanics. But what they were able to do in this experiment was by aligning the magnetic moments of the two streams, and then selecting for one stream, they could select for neutrons that had to go through one path. Does that make sense? They basically filtered out one of the two paths.<br /> <br /> So now they have, even though those streams came together again, they could select out the neutrons that chose Path A, and filter out all the neutrons that chose Path B. But at the same time, they could also align the magnetic moment of the neutrons, and they did it differently for the two paths. And what they were able to show was that the neutrons at the other end went down Path A, but their magnetic moment essentially went down Path B. Does that make sense?<br /> <br /> E: Uh ...<br /> <br /> B: That's sweet as hell, man.<br /> <br /> E: Sure!<br /> <br /> B: I love quantum mechanics.<br /> <br /> S: So, they separated the particle from its own magnetic moment.<br /> <br /> R: Okay.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's ...<br /> <br /> B: I love it!<br /> <br /> S: Crazy quantum mechanics. Alright, so that one is science. So, I guess we'll go on to #3. Researchers have successfully created Cooper pairs, the hallmark of superconductivity in an indium alloy at near room temperature. Bob, Jay, and Rebecca think this one is fiction. Evan thinks this one is science. And this one is ... so you guys are all assuming that creating Cooper pairs ...<br /> <br /> B: Oh, god.<br /> <br /> S: ... is equal to superconductivity.<br /> <br /> R: Look, I don't know, Steve.<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, I am!<br /> <br /> S: What if they were able to create Cooper pairs even though the material itself wasn't superconducting? Bob, you know what Cooper pairs are.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, the electrons get bound together, and they can just slide through, and not be disturbed by any part of the material. It's one of the hallmarks of a special class of superconductivity, but, yeah, technically, you're right. And if it's true, I'm gonna kill you.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Well ...<br /> <br /> E: On his birthday?<br /> <br /> S: It is technically correct, but this one is the fiction!<br /> <br /> R: Hurray!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah!<br /> <br /> S: So ...<br /> <br /> R: Oh my god! I got one right!<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Cooper pairs are basically superconductivity. But, this is based on a real item. I always get a chuckle when you guys say, &quot;How could Steve think of this?&quot; Well, I'm not making stuff up. I'm always basing it off of some item. I'm just tweaking.<br /> <br /> B: He's not that creative!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I don't have to be that creative, yeah. What this ... the item basically is just physicists understanding a little bit better, the nature of superconductivity. And the hope is that one day, one magical day, they'll use this knowledge in order to be able to finally get the &quot;holy grail,&quot; and make room temperature superconductors. But, yeah, they have not created anything. They just were able to, make some further investigation to sort of further understanding essentially the quantum glue that holds these Cooper pairs together. That was the breakthrough.<br /> <br /> J: Very cool<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. But they did use indium; So, I pulled that out of there. Indium, by the way, indium is an element. It is atomic #49. It is a metal. It's a soft metal with a fairly low melting point. It's chemically similar to {{w|gallium}} and {{w|thallium}}, indium. Pretty cool.<br /> <br /> E: It sounds like two dwarves from {{w|The Lord of the Rings|Lord of the Rings}}.<br /> <br /> (Jay laughs)<br /> <br /> B: Gallium! Thalium!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: Right, okay, let's go on to #1. A recently published analysis indicates that if we continue our current mix of electricity generation, 20 to 40% of the world will have serious water shortage by 2020, and there will be a global water shortage by 2040 is ... science. Doesn't mean this is going to come ...<br /> <br /> R: Hooray for water scarcity!<br /> <br /> S: So, the connection, as Rebecca said, is we need to use a lot of water to cool these power generators. Whether it's nuclear, or it's coal, or whatever. You can't let them overheat. A lot of power plants don't really track how much water they're using. So the authors are saying this is a problem. We need to more carefully track this.<br /> <br /> R: Really? Jeez.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, and what they mean by a water shortage is that you will essentially have to choose between power generation and drinking water, that we won't have enough to do both.<br /> <br /> E: Hrmm...<br /> <br /> S: By 2040 – which doesn't sound that far in the future when you think about it -<br /> <br /> E: A generation.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, that the entire world will be experiencing this water shortage if we are meeting our electricity needs at that time with our current mix of power generation. So, what's the solution? Well, they make a number of recommendations. Improve energy efficiency; better research on alternative cooling cycles; researching on how much water power plants use; massive investments in wind and solar, because wind and solar don't use a lot of water; and abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water stressed places, which is, they say, half the planet, because that's what uses the most water to make electricity.<br /> <br /> So, yeah, pretty frightening extrapolation, but of course, it's one study, this is &lt;I&gt;their&lt;/I&gt; analysis. These are always difficult. There's a lot of moving parts, you know.<br /> <br /> E: That's why I thought it wasn't science, you know.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, you know. I just said, it's a published analysis that indicates this. I thought you could believe it or not believe it. But any single analysis like this, like, &quot;We're reaching {{w|peak oil}}!&quot; Any of those, you always got to take them with a grain of salt because, you know, you leave out one factor, and it can change the whole outcome, you know? So, it's very tricky. And I'd like to see that there's a consensus, that multiple independant analyses are overlapping, coming to the same conclusion. So ... but it definitely is one more reason that even if their projections are overly grim, it's one more reason to get off fossil fuels, and to make, as Bob suggests, a massive investment in at least solar energy. So, there you have it. Good job, guys!<br /> <br /> J: Thank you!<br /> <br /> B: Thank you, except Evan.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you!<br /> <br /> == Announcements: &lt;small&gt;(1:20:33)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Jay, before we get to the quote, I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, I want to give a very sincere thank you to everyone who has donated to our legal defence fund. We are already, we've covered about 60% of the legal expenses that we have made so far. So, we have covered a huge chunk of our legal expenses with the donations.<br /> <br /> Obviously, we can't know ahead of time what the ultimate costs are gonna be. I have estimates from my lawyer, and it's a lot. You know, it's probably gonna be somewhere between 60 and 70,000 dollars if the thing goes the distance. So, we do have a ways to go before we got there. But, in just one week, there has been an incredible outpouring of support for the SGU, for our defence against this lawsuit, and of course, people donating to support our defence, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it.<br /> <br /> We also wanted to point out that the SGU, always looking to expand our activity, has a new webpage on our SGU homepage, the Science News page. So, if you go to [http://www.theskepticsguide.org theskepticsguide.org], and you click on the science news banner, you will see that we're putting up about two to three news items per day. We're going to be expanding it, but we're selecting items that are like, the coolest news items of the day. And Evan is doing some reviews of ... Evan has got, you've got two that you're doing. Why don't you describe them really quick for us, Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, thanks, Steve. So, I am doing two reviews, like, you said. One is ... I call it the SGU Cutting Room Floor. So, these are some items that we would have loved to have gotten to on the last episode of the show, but just didn't have the time. There's always more items than we have time for. And then the other one is called the Top 5 Ridiculous Comments of the Week. So, I scour the internet, looking for people making all sorts of ridiculous comments on all sorts of different things, and I try to condense that down to the top 5 each week. So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yep, and we're adding some special segments. We have a Weird, Wildlife Wednesday segment that we're putting out. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/author/kate Kate Christian] is doing that for us. Kate's really been helpf7ul with all of our social media efforts. So, I'd like to thank her as well for helping us get this going. And send us, if you have any ideas for science news bits you'd like to see on the Science News page, let us know. We're always looking to expand the content that we're putting there.<br /> <br /> And, of course, all of this is interfacing with our Facebook page, which we have been extremely active on as well. So, if you haven't checked out our Facebook page recently, check it out. Check out our Science News page. Send us ideas for stuff you'd like to see there.<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:23:14)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;“I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.”-Lawrence M. Krauss&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, give us the quote.<br /> <br /> J: &quot;I hope that every person at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won’t feel they’re human anymore, to be proved wrong because that’s the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.” (Shouting) {{w|Lawrence M. Krauss}}!<br /> <br /> S: I like that! I like that. It's a very good quote. It is a good, sobering, humbling experience to have something you firmly believe be proven completely and utterly wrong.<br /> <br /> J: That was sent in by a listener named, Brendan Shwass, from New Zealand. Brendan, we're fully expecting to meet you in person when we will be in New Zealand, I think, what is that, the first week of December?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me this week, everyone.<br /> <br /> B: Sure, Steve.<br /> <br /> R: Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> B: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> R: Happy birthday!<br /> <br /> S: Thank you guys.<br /> <br /> R: What a better way to spend your birthday.<br /> <br /> J: I love you.<br /> <br /> E: Hey, happy birthda-a-ay!<br /> <br /> J: You're one of the best people I know, Steve.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you, thank you brotha. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> Before Greenwich got Greenwich Mean Time, it was zero longitude, used by sailors.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Prime meridian (Greenwich)|Zero Longitude}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> All batteries need to have three things in order to work: An electrolite, an anode, and a cathode.&lt;ref&gt;{{w|Battery (electricity)|Battery components}}&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> The KT extinction boundary has been renamed the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary|K-Pg}} boundary.<br /> <br /> Humanity is headed for a global water shortage&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm Looming water shortage]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Interview = y<br /> |General Science = y<br /> |History = y<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y <br /> |Physics &amp; Mechanics = y<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y<br /> |SGU = y<br /> |Technology = y}}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9564 2015-01-11T19:14:49Z

<p>WearSunScreen: Added verified flag</p> <hr /> <div>{{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> verified = y<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2,000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103608 study published in PLOS One]. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called Mostagedda. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The Knights of the Obsidian Order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidian to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way. No.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9563 2015-01-11T16:37:34Z

<p>WearSunScreen: Removed need to proof read</p> <hr /> <div>{{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2,000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103608 study published in PLOS One]. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called Mostagedda. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The Knights of the Obsidian Order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidian to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way. No.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9562 2015-01-11T16:35:52Z

<p>WearSunScreen: Removing active proofreading notice, removing need for proof reading</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = n <br /> |}}<br /> <br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2,000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103608 study published in PLOS One]. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called Mostagedda. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The Knights of the Obsidian Order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidian to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way. No.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9561 2015-01-11T16:32:48Z

<p>WearSunScreen: Adding my name as a proofer</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{Proof reading all<br /> |proofer = WearSunScreen<br /> }}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2,000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103608 study published in PLOS One]. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called Mostagedda. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The Knights of the Obsidian Order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidian to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way. No.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9560 2015-01-11T16:26:45Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:19:31) */ spelling correction</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2,000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103608 study published in PLOS One]. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called Mostagedda. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The Knights of the Obsidian Order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidian to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way. No.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9559 2015-01-11T15:59:04Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Science or Fiction (1:01:34) */ Corrected &quot;Mostegedda&quot;, added link to PLOS One study</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2,000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103608 study published in PLOS One]. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called Mostagedda. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The knights of the obsidian order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidean to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9558 2015-01-11T15:46:53Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Science or Fiction (1:01:34) */ phonetized the discussion of the pronunciation of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-MA-nyon? Or Cro-MAG-non?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-MA-nyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-MA-nyon. It's like Nee-AN-der-thal and Nee-AN-der-tal. Although I've gone back to Nee-AN-der-thal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, [[Cro-Magnon]] were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a study published in Plos One. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called {{w|Mastaba}}. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The knights of the obsidian order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidean to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9557 2015-01-11T07:02:02Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Science or Fiction (1:01:34) */ linking Upper Paleolithic, punctuation changes</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that... because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I think the Cro-Magnons didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, a glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Now, is it Cro-Manyon? Or Cro-Magnon?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-Manyon. It's like {{w|Neanderthal}} and Neandertal. Although I've gone back to Neanderthal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Paleolithic Upper Paleolithic] humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a study published in Plos One. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called {{w|Mastaba}}. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The knights of the obsidian order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidean to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9556 2015-01-11T06:43:56Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* The Hobbit follow up (58:14) */ Hominin for hominid</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominin; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they ... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I just think the Cro-Magnons just didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is ... Now, is it Cro-Manyon? Or Cro-Magnon?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-Manyon. It's like {{w|Neanderthal}} and Neandertal. Although I've gone back to Neanderthal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European upper {{w|paleolithic}} humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is ... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a study published in Plos One. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called {{w|Mastaba}}. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The knights of the obsidian order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidean to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9555 2015-01-11T06:39:03Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* The Hobbit follow up (58:14) */ Hominin for Hominid</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominini|hominin}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominid; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they ... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I just think the Cro-Magnons just didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is ... Now, is it Cro-Manyon? Or Cro-Magnon?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-Manyon. It's like {{w|Neanderthal}} and Neandertal. Although I've gone back to Neanderthal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European upper {{w|paleolithic}} humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is ... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a study published in Plos One. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called {{w|Mastaba}}. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The knights of the obsidian order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidean to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9554 2015-01-11T06:29:02Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* Who&#039;s That Noisy (52:35) */ Correcting Armonica</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|Glass Armonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominidae|hominid}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominid; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they ... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I just think the Cro-Magnons just didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is ... Now, is it Cro-Manyon? Or Cro-Magnon?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-Manyon. It's like {{w|Neanderthal}} and Neandertal. Although I've gone back to Neanderthal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European upper {{w|paleolithic}} humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is ... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a study published in Plos One. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called {{w|Mastaba}}. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The knights of the obsidian order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidean to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

WearSunScreen https://www.sgutranscripts.org/w/index.php?title=SGU_Episode_475&diff=9553 2015-01-11T06:27:24Z

<p>WearSunScreen: /* iPhone Performance (44:49) */</p> <hr /> <div>{{Editing required<br /> |proof-reading = y <br /> |}}<br /> {{InfoBox<br /> |episodeNum = 475<br /> |episodeDate = August 16&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014 &lt;!-- broadcast date --&gt;<br /> |episodeIcon = File:Rangeomorphs.jpg &lt;!-- use &quot;File:&quot; and file name for image on show notes page--&gt;<br /> |previous = &lt;!-- not required, automates to previous episode --&gt;<br /> |next = &lt;!-- not required, automates to next episode --&gt;<br /> |bob = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |jay = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |evan = y &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |perry = &lt;!-- leave blank if absent --&gt;<br /> |guest1 = {{w|Phil Plait|P: Phil Plait}}<br /> |guest2 = {{w|Rene Ritchie|RR: Rene Ritchie}}<br /> |guest3 = &lt;!-- leave blank if no third guest --&gt;<br /> |downloadLink = http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2014-08-16.mp3<br /> |forumLink = http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44364.0.html<br /> |qowText = There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. &lt;!-- add quote of the week text--&gt;<br /> |qowAuthor = {{w|George Washington}} &lt;!-- add author and link --&gt;<br /> |}}<br /> <br /> == Introduction ==<br /> ''You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.''<br /> <br /> S: Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2014, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella ...<br /> <br /> B: Hey, everybody!<br /> <br /> S: Jay Novella ...<br /> <br /> J: Hey guys,<br /> <br /> S: Evan Bernstein ...<br /> <br /> E: Good evening folks!<br /> <br /> S: And we have a guest rogue this week, {{w|Phil Plait}}, the Bad Astronomer. Phil, welcome back to the Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks for having me on! I've never been on this show before, and this is quite exciting.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's quite the novel experience, isn't it.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, wow!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, Phil!<br /> <br /> E: Phil?<br /> <br /> B: Good to have ya back, man! Yay!<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckles) Well, Rebecca is having computer problems. She'll join us later if she ever manages to troubleshoot, but she may be out this evening.<br /> <br /> P: It's me; I know it's me. How many times have I done this show, and how many times have I actually done this when Rebecca's been on? It's been twice, it seems like.<br /> <br /> E: Are you saying maybe your magnetic field is interfering with her magnetic field, and causing some sort of issue there?<br /> <br /> S: Well, it was a good week then, because basically, you'll be the faux Rebecca for this week.<br /> <br /> (Phil laughs. Rogues speak over each other.)<br /> <br /> E: Sure, sure!<br /> <br /> J: Don't speak in a high voice.<br /> <br /> E: And put on your larger-rimmed glasses.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if I have a pair of green, plastic glasses, or whatever she's wearing these days.<br /> <br /> == Phil Plait Update &lt;small&gt;(1:20)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> <br /> S: Phil, tell us what you've been up to.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, just hanging out, you know. Actually, honestly, it's been pretty busy this summer. I've been writing a lot, traveling a lot, hitting some cons, giving talks, working on some &lt;I&gt;secret projects&lt;/I&gt; I can't talk about just yet, but hopefully I'll have some news about very soon.<br /> <br /> S: Um hmm.<br /> <br /> P: And it's just been crazy busy.<br /> <br /> S: So, if there are any listeners who don't know who Phil Plait is, he is the Bad Astronomer. You could read him at, you're on Slate, right? [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html Badastronomy.com]? If you just look at Bad Astronomy. You'll be the first hit.<br /> <br /> P: And I'll say, coming up soon, I'm gonna be at the bad ad hoc hypothesis fest, [http://bahfest.com/ BAHFest] with {{w|Zach Weiner}} in {{w|San Francisco}}, where people get to come up with crazy, evolutionary theories, and present them to an audience, and it's all gonna be very funny. So if you look up B-A-H-fest, that's gonna be great. I can't wait for that.<br /> <br /> J: Oh, cool!<br /> <br /> B: That sounds cool.<br /> <br /> == This Day in Skepticism &lt;small&gt;(2:15)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * August 16, 1634: Urbain Grandier is burned at the stake for witchcraft.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Grandier<br /> <br /> S: So, I'm gonna cover This Day in Skepticism, since Rebecca is not here. You guys ever heard of {{w|Urbain Grandier}}?<br /> <br /> J: No.<br /> <br /> S: Does anybody know how to pronounce Urbain Grandier?<br /> <br /> J: Don't ask me.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> S: 'Cause, is it Grandi-ay, do you think? G-R-A-N-D-I-E-R?<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ehr.<br /> <br /> B: Could be. Could be.<br /> <br /> S: Gran-dee-ay? Maybe.<br /> <br /> P: Gran-dee-ay. You kind of swallow the &quot;R&quot; a wee bit.<br /> <br /> E: Grandiugh.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so he – he died on August 18th ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, it's a person!<br /> <br /> S: 1634. Yeah, it's a person. He was burned alive at the stake for being ...<br /> <br /> P: A newt!<br /> <br /> S: A witch!<br /> <br /> B: A skeptic.<br /> <br /> E: A witch! (Inaudible) out of ...<br /> <br /> B: A warlock!<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, a man witch is warlock, right?<br /> <br /> S: It's true! {{w|The Benny Hill Show|Benny Hill}} reference. So,<br /> <br /> (More laughter)<br /> <br /> P: Wow! That's reaching way back!<br /> <br /> S: That's going back. It's an interesting story. He was a priest, but didn't buy the whole celibacy thing. He actually wrote a book trying to convince the Catholic church that ...<br /> <br /> B: I could see that.<br /> <br /> S: yeah, Catholic priests don't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; have to be ... the doctrine of clerical celibacy was passé, and should be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, he just ignored it, and was known as a [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philanderer philanderer]. And it's kind of a confused story about, between him, and a nunnery, and the Mother Superior at the nunnery was interested in him ...<br /> <br /> B: Wow!<br /> <br /> S: but he rebuked her. So then she accused him of cavorting with the devil. And some of the other nuns agreed with that. So then he was put on trial. He was found innocent. But then his enemy, {{w|Cardinal Richelieu}}, the chief minister of France, he campaigned against Grandier.<br /> <br /> He essentially reopened the trial, charged him again, and then, at that point, the nuns essentially recanted their earlier testimony. They would not repeat their accusations. Didn't matter. They essentially produced a contract, a written contract between Grandier and Satan.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs hard)<br /> <br /> P: Whoa!<br /> <br /> S: The contract, I gotta read the whole thing because it's right out of the show Supernatural. It's wonderful. Here is the translated version of the contract. <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We, the influential Lucifer, the young Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi,<br /> and Astaroth, together with others, have today accepted the covenant pact<br /> of Urbain Grandier, who is ours. And him do we promise<br /> the love of women, the flower of virgins, the respect of monarchs, honors, lusts and powers.<br /> He will go whoring three days long; the carousal will be dear to him. He offers us once<br /> in the year a seal of blood, under the feet he will trample the holy things of the church and<br /> he will ask us many questions; with this pact he will live twenty years happy<br /> on the earth of men, and will later join us to sin against God.<br /> Bound in hell, in the council of demons.<br /> Lucifer Beelzebub Satan<br /> Astaroth Leviathan Elimi<br /> The seals placed the Devil, the master, and the demons, princes of the lord.<br /> Baalberith, writer.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> B: What the hell?<br /> <br /> S: And they presented this as a genuine document. And he was convicted. Probably, they got him to confess under torture.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Or they just made it up. You know, you can't really tell the difference. But he did profess his innocence right until they burned him alive at the stake. It really is, do any of you guys watch Supernatural, the show {{w|Supernatural (U.s. TV Series)|Supernatural}}?<br /> <br /> B: No.<br /> <br /> E: I – I've steered clear of...<br /> <br /> B: It's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: It's, you know, it's good mind candy. It's good, it's well written. It's fun. But this is like, they use this as a source, this is like, right out of one of the episodes.<br /> <br /> (Evan and Steve laugh)<br /> <br /> E: That's classic.<br /> <br /> S: That's what you could do to your enemies back then. 1634, you could just decide, &quot;Well, I don't like that guy. I'm gonna get him burned at the stake for making a pact with the devil.&quot;<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god. And the nuns recanted! They didn't even join in! And still ...<br /> <br /> S: It didn't matter.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Make it up.<br /> <br /> P: Way too late for that, right?<br /> <br /> J: So, Steve, you sure that he didn't make a pact with the devil though?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, you can't prove that he didn't not make a pact with the devil.<br /> <br /> E: I know! We have to prove that Lucifer and Bezelbub and Satan didn't &lt;I&gt;really&lt;/I&gt; sign that document.<br /> <br /> S: No, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Elimi, I think that's all one person.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And then there's As ... yeah. That's the way ... because it's signed ...<br /> <br /> E: Oh, it kind of covers all those.<br /> <br /> S: It's signed Lucifer Beelzebub Satan, that's one signature. And then below that, Asteroth Leviathon Elimi. It's confusing.<br /> <br /> P: Did he sign with a hoof print or anything like that?<br /> <br /> S: Or those may all be different people. They often signed with their symbol, not a name. It's just a symbol.<br /> <br /> P: Well, he is legion, for he is many.<br /> <br /> S: He is legion. That is true.<br /> <br /> <br /> == News Items ==<br /> === Carrington Event Redux &lt;small&gt;(7:12)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> *http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/<br /> <br /> S: Alright, well, hey, Phil, while we got you here, let's talk about a couple of astronomy items. I understand that NASA said something like, &quot;Hey, you know what guys? By the way, two years ago civilization was almost destroyed. Carry on.<br /> <br /> E: (Laughs) Everything's fine now.<br /> <br /> S: Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.<br /> <br /> P: That's not really such a horrible way of summarizing this story.<br /> <br /> S: I know!<br /> <br /> E: Oh my gosh.<br /> <br /> P: You know, and I'm laughing about it, but two years ago, I remember when this happened, and it was like, &quot;Oh, wow! The sun really blew off a big ol' blob of stuff there,&quot; and I didn't really think anything of it. And now we're learning, and I guess it was known then, but it's starting to come out now, that in fact, the solar storm was a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; event.<br /> <br /> So, the sun is not just sitting there glowing hot. It has a very strong and complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Magnetic_field magnetic field], and there's a huge amount of energy that is stored in that magnetic field. This energy can be released. There are a couple of ways it can do this.<br /> <br /> It can do it on the surface, where the magnetic field lines get very tangled up, and just basically, you get a tremendous and very short burst of energy. And by tremendous, I mean millions of times the size of a nuclear weapon. It's a huge thing. And that's what we call a {{w|solar flare}}.<br /> <br /> That can trigger a much larger event called a {{w|coronal mass ejection}}, which is also a magnetic event; but basically this will eject something like a billion tonnes of subatomic particles from the sun.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, from my reading, the relationship between really big solar flares and coronal mass ejections is still controversial, or uncertain?<br /> <br /> P: Let me say that it is clear that some flares happen, and then coronal mass ejections happen right after them. So, CME's, as well call them, can be triggered by flares, or they are both two aspects of the same event. But we also get flares without coronal mass ejections, and we get coronal mass ejections without flares.<br /> <br /> So, they are connected in some physical way, but it's not always clear what's causing which, and what's exactly happening. But, in fact, the biggest event like this that was ever seen was in 1859. It was the so-called {{w|Solar storm of 1859|Carrington event}}. It was actually seen by a couple of astronomers who were observing the sun in visible light.<br /> <br /> And for a flare to be seen in visible light against the background of the sun is huge. That was a big event. And that triggered a &lt;I&gt;huge&lt;/I&gt; coronal mass ejection, and this basically, a blast of these subatomic particles went screaming across the solar system and hit the Earth.<br /> <br /> And there is an associated magnetic field sort of trapped in this {{w|Plasma (physics)|plasma}} that moves outward with it. That affects the Earth's magnetic field. A whole series of things has to happen here. But basically, it's kind of like a {{w|Sympathetic resonance|sympathetic vibration}}, in a sense. The magnetic field of this plasma cloud interacts with our magnetic field, and can generate a huge amount of electric current in the Earth itself, under the ground. This is called a {{w|Geomagnetically induced current}}.<br /> <br /> That can cause a lot of damage! Back then, in 1859, it caused telegraphs to short out. There were places where the telegraph batteries were basically turned off, but there was so much electricity flowing through the lines with the batteries turned off because of this event; basically, it was creating electric current in the Earth; that telegraphs could work, even though they were, in a sense, switched off.<br /> <br /> It's bizarre! And we've been saying for years, if this were to happen now, this would be a catastrophe! We've seen smaller events cause blackouts, like in {{w|Quebec}} in 1989. That's the canonical example people use. Something like this could destroy satellites, it could cause widespread blackouts. We haven't had an event that big since 1859. And in fact, that's when these things were first discovered. That event was so huge, that even at the time, they could see it.<br /> <br /> Well, it turns out in 2012, the sun blew off another one of these huge events, and it missed the Earth by about two weeks if you want to think of it that way. If this had happened, I think, two weeks earlier, the Earth would have been in a position in its orbit where this would have actually hit us. As it was, it was directed away from us, and hit a satellite that's orbiting the sun, and that footage is terrifying. It looks like it was hit by a shotgun.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: Wow.<br /> <br /> P: And that's how we were able to measure the strength of this thing, and some scientists have said, &quot;Yeah! This thing was at least the equal of the 1859 event. And if it had happened, we would have lost satellites, we would have lost power. The internet would be down.&quot; And be honest, there's one scientist who said, &quot;Today, two years later, we'd still be picking up the pieces.&quot;<br /> <br /> J: Phil, if it hit, would it hit half the Earth, wherever the energy was coming from? Would it be that way? Or would it be more regional, like in a specific country size.<br /> <br /> B: It would propagate around most of the Earth, I think, because of the Earth's magnetic – is it the magnetic field? Or the {{w|Van Allen radiation belt|Van Allen Belts}}?<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, basically, it's, there's a lot of regional damage. For example, in North America, up in the northern states, and in Canada, the geography and literally the geology underground makes it a little bit easier for this magnetic-induced current to exist. Which is why, for example, Quebec lost power, whereas other places didn't.<br /> <br /> So, you get specific damage because of the way the Earth is constructed. And it depends on which way the Earth is tilted. So, if it happens in the summer, it might ... and I should say the way the magnetic field of the plasma connects with the Earth. It has its own north and south magnetic field poles just like we do, and it might connect better with the Earth in the north pole than the south pole, and all this stuff.<br /> <br /> It could be global. Certainly, these fast moving subatomic particles slam into satellites and basically create ... they generate huge {{w|Electromagnetic pulse|electromagnetic pulses}}. And that will short out the satellite. And that can happen anywhere in space. It doesn't matter if it's in the north or south pole. As long as it's not behind the Earth, shadowed by the physical bulk of the Earth itself, the satellites can get overwhelmed by this.<br /> <br /> Military satellites are {{w|Radiation hardening|hardened}} against this sort of thing, but it's hard to tell if we would lose some military satellites as well.<br /> <br /> J: You think we could simulate it in a small scale to test devices?<br /> <br /> P: Well, we have! Look up {{w|Starfish Prime}} on the web. This was a nuclear test back in the ... '60's, I believe it was, without looking it up. And it was a nuclear bomb that went up over the Pacific. And I want to say they blew it up about 900 kilometers off the surface of the Earth, but it actually caused power outages in Hawaii. Blew out stop lights, traffic lights, and street lights, because of the electromagnetic pulse from this thing. It was really tremendous!<br /> <br /> B: Phil, I think it reached 800 miles in Hawaii. In your blog, I think you mentioned that.<br /> <br /> P: Oh, okay. I mean ...<br /> <br /> B: Quite a distance.<br /> <br /> P: Of course, it's going off the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is curved. The higher up you go, the farther away the direct line of sight is. So, Hawaii could have been on the horizon. It could have been a thousand or more miles away. Even if the bomb were only a few hundred miles up. So, the reach of this thing was quite huge, and that was caused by the huge pulse of subatomic particles and ... gamma rays actually, from the bomb.<br /> <br /> So, in a sense, that sort of EMP - the electromagnetic pulse – is similar to a coronal mass ejection. I don't know how they would compare. I mean, the pulse from a bomb is very localized; something from a CME would envelop the entire geomagnetic region of the Earth. But either way, you don't want to be screwing around with forces like this.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Phil, I was trying to figure out, to find some definitive sources, exactly what would be vulnerable. Everyone seems to agree that satellites would be massively vulnerable unless they were really hardened against this type of event; that the power grid, because it's so huge, would be extremely vulnerable, especially the {{w|Transformer|transformers}}, which could easily be shorted out. But then, as you get progressively smaller and smaller, I found less and less agreement, and just more opinions, and I couldn't find any really hard data.<br /> <br /> So, for example, would the electronics in an airplane be taken out; or in a car even, be taken out by this; or would consumer electronics plugged in, of course they could always get a surge off of the power line, but unplugged, would this melt my hard drive?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I will say that I am sure that there are people who know this, and could answer your question. These people may not be allowed to answer your question. I can expect that after Starburst Prime, which is when this effect was, I believe it was first seen, first discovered, there were tests specifically for this. And you can generate electromagnetic pulses on a small scale in various ways, not quite like they do in the movies, but it can be done.<br /> <br /> And I imagine they test this on hardware. The question is, will it happen? I don't know. The direct effects of these things, the subatomic particles, they tend not to get very far past our magnetic field, or not really that far past our atmosphere. You need &lt;I&gt;tremendously&lt;/I&gt; energetic subatomic particles to slam into our atmosphere, and then basically create subatomic shrapnel, I like to think about it, secondary particles that come screaming down in a shower. And those can affect things on the ground directly.<br /> <br /> But I'm not even sure you can generate that sort of thing with a nuclear weapon. I don't know, to be honest. But either way, that's a good question. And like I said, I'm sure there are government people who know, but aren't talking.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, maybe that's why I couldn't find a definitive answer. A lot of opinions, but they're all over the place. Somebody's saying, &quot;Oh, our electronic equipment is a million times more sensitive to this sort of thing than it was 40 years ago. But other people seem to think that small devices really wouldn't be at risk. But I couldn't find any calculations, not even like, a back-of-the-envelope calculations to really inform it. It was all just naked opinions.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I'm not sure how you would do that. I mean, the Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of this. These particles really have a hard time getting through. So you probably wouldn't be directly affected. There wouldn't be anybody who would be dying of radiation poisoning except maybe astronauts, who are out in space, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Down here on the ground, that wouldn't happen. However, secondary effects, power outages, hospitals being out of power, lack of air conditioning if this happened in the summer, lack of heating if it happened in the winter, this could be a real problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah<br /> <br /> P: Now, the power grid, you can think of the power lines as being like pipes, with water flowing through them, except in this case, it's wires with electricity. When a lot of these things were built, they were built 50 years ago or more, when the capacity, the load was a lot lower. We didn't have that many houses and buildings and such. Now though, we're running this grid almost at capacity. And if you induce current in these lines, if you add extra lines into them, it's like trying to force more water through a pipe than it can handle. The pipe bursts. And that's what would happen to these lines.<br /> <br /> And basically, you get these huge transformers, some of which are very large; they're as big as a room in your house, they just get destroyed. And they're not mass produced. They have to be built by hand. It could take months to replace them. And that's why this is such a problem.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, what I've read is that the world makes maybe a hundred of these a year, these large, large, transformers, and has maybe a thousand of them. So, if you think about, and that's at current capacity. Assuming we didn't lose the ability to make these things, because there's no power ...<br /> <br /> P: A good point!<br /> <br /> S: It would take 10 years to replace the world's supply of these things.<br /> <br /> P: Probably, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: So it could easily, we could easily have power outages that take years, like several years to rectify.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, if you think about that, you think about literally sitting down, and saying, for the next five years, I will not have electricity. That's terrifying! The good news is there are people who've been thinking about this, and what they are thinking of doing are launching a series of small satellites that can detect when these things are about to happen. And you put them in orbit around the sun, then they send us a signal, and we might have minutes or hours, or in the best case, days, although that seems unlikely. These particles travel pretty fast.<br /> <br /> But even so, an hour or two would be enough to shunt power to different grids, to turn things off, maybe even shut the power off to whole areas, which for a few hours would be a lot better than losing your power for the next year. I like this idea, and I know people researching it. I hope they can come up with something soon.<br /> <br /> S: Seems like a worthwhile investment.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about trillions of dollars here, more. Crazy ...<br /> <br /> J: Would it be that easy as just turning off our stuff?<br /> <br /> P: Not so much turning it off, but turning off the power at the source, and making sure that the power in the power lines themselves is at a much lower capacity so that you have room for the extra electricity to flow through if you need to. I'm oversimplifying, but it's that sort of idea.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> B: So, Phil, right now, we don't have the probes or satellites in place that could give us warning?<br /> <br /> P: As far as I understand it, nothing really dedicated to this. You could use some of the things we have. We do have satellites orbiting closer to the sun, but you want something that's sort of nimble, that can detect these things specifically. You don't want to have some astronomer just happen to notice, &quot;Oh, look! That satellite just go shot-gun blasted by subatomic particles.&quot;<br /> <br /> We do have those sorts of alerts out; there's a whole system. In fact, here in {{w|Boulder, Colorado|Boulder}}, there's the space weather center, the Space Weather Protection Center, {{w|Space Weather Prediction Center}}! That's it! (Laughs) That's what I get for having to think on my feet. And that's their job, to basically, is to monitor the sun, make sure, if it's about to blow out something, that they can warn people in time.<br /> <br /> But even if they do, I don't think there's a governmental or electrical system in place that would allow us to do anything about it. And it – that really needs to be set up, as this 2012 event shows us.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: The reason that missed us is because it was aimed the wrong way. There is no reason it could not have been aimed right at us, and we would not be having this conversation right now.<br /> <br /> E: So, it's not a matter of &lt;I&gt;if&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen, it's a matter of &lt;I&gt;when&lt;/I&gt; it's gonna happen.<br /> <br /> B: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's statistically speaking, given enough time, yeah, this is gonna happen again.<br /> <br /> B: Well, they're saying, what, 12% ...<br /> <br /> S: 12% for the next 10 years! That's a really high probability.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, but the last one 1859. You'd think we'd have had another one squeezed in there at least in between before now.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, those kinds of statistics are a little weird, and I'm not sure how exactly they calculated them. But, that's right. There was an astronomer named Baker who estimated the odds the Earth will get hit by something like this in the next 10 years is 12%, right? 1 out of 8.<br /> <br /> But it's hard to say. And yeah, the fact that it's been 160, 170 years, 150 years, whatever it is, kind of shows you that this isn't happening that often, but it does happen. And if we do nothing, yeah, we're basically sealing our fate.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, let's move on.<br /> <br /> === Rangeomorphs &lt;small&gt;(22:54)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.theskepticsguide.org/the-first-animals-were-living-fractals-maybe<br /> <br /> S: Bob, you're gonna tell us about a cool, extinct type of living critter. We don't even really know if we should call them animals.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's a little controversial, but there seems to be a little bit of a consensus at least, but the idea is that paleontologists have uncovered new fossils of the earliest multicellular life that was big enough to see with the naked eye, at least.<br /> <br /> And the fossils have been known for a while, but they found a new batch of them that were pretty interesting. There's some disagreement, but like I said, but they may be among the first animals that ever existed, and – get this – they were {{w|Fractal|fractals}}, animal fractals, which is ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> B: ... just so awesome! So, they're called {{w|Rangeomorph|Rangeomorphs}}. I think that's how you pronounce that, which is kind of a cool name. They existed in the geological period called the {{w|Ediacaran}}, which lasted from 635 to 541 million years ago. So, incredibly ancient. Now, that was right before the Cambrian period, which you may have heard of.<br /> <br /> Now, {{w|Fossil|fossilization}} is sparse in these ancient rock layers, primarily because lifeforms from that time just didn't have any easily fossilized body parts, or hard shells. And that was because shells hadn't even evolved yet. I mean, that's how long ago we're talking.<br /> <br /> But it wasn't just shells though. Most of the structures that we think of as kind of important for animals, I'm talking things like legs, internal organs, nervous systems, even mouths were not anywhere on the entire Earth. Yet these creatures were pretty much cutting edge biotechnology because they were among the very first multicellular life, and they weren't tiny any more. They ranged from 10 centimeters to 2 meters.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the world was pretty much single-celled organisms. So, Rangeomorphs had no competition, essentially. So, based on what I've said so far, and if you look at their images, they look like plants. They have these frond-like extensions, that look like fronds or leaves. So, it's easy to think that they were plants. And that would make sense, except for this little fact that they just lived too deep in the oceans for photosynthesis to be of any help.<br /> <br /> And, they couldn't even move, which makes them even more seem like plants, but no photosynthesis, then they really couldn't have been plants, not plants that we know of anyway.<br /> <br /> So, eating appears to be something that happened to them, instead of an active strategy on their part. Nutrients that just happened to wash over their {{w|Biological membrane|membranes}} would be absorbed. And that actually, was not a terrible idea long ago, since the oceans were a surprising nutrient-rich [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_hypothesis primordial soup] – I had to say that – much more so than today.<br /> <br /> Now, this method of eating, of just kind of passively waiting for food to come to you would have been facilitated by the body plan of these rangeomorphs. Now, you need lots of surface area, it needs to be maximized so that you could absorb the food that just happens to impact you. So fractal shapes are awesome for that.<br /> <br /> We've talked about fractals a little bit before. Fractals are shapes that exhibit self-similarity. Tiny parts of them look like the whole, which means their scale and variance. So, if you zoom in close, or pull out really far away, they pretty much look the same way.<br /> <br /> So, these shapes are found all over nature. Coastlines, mountains, clouds, lungs, they're pretty much everywhere. And one of the reasons why they can take up so much space is that they have what's called fractal dimensions, so they could have dimension of not just 2, but 2.5, or 2.6 depending on how close they are to actually becoming 3-dimensional.<br /> <br /> So they fill up space with incredible efficiency, which, for example, that's why lungs can be very tiny, but because of their fractal nature, they have a surface area of about 90 square meters! &lt;!-- Today I Learned --&gt;<br /> <br /> So, things were going really well for these first animal-like creatures for millions of years until there was this explosion. What explosion was that, Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Cambrian explosion?<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Cambrian explosion}}, yes! That was a milestone of epic proportions. The fossil record of that period in time shows evolution having this kind of creative spasm. New body plans and {{w|Phylum|phyla}} appeared for the first time, and so many in fact, that all the phyla that exist today, except for one, I believe, were found there first. That's just kind of like, yep, I'm gonna try all of these different types of body plans, and a whole bunch of them were so successful, they're pretty much still around today.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, but there are lots of phyla in the Cambrian {{w|fauna}} that don't exist any more.<br /> <br /> B: Well, yeah, I kind of implied that. I mean, it wasn't 100% successful, but, it was kind of like a scatter shot, and<br /> <br /> S: Most of them didn't.<br /> <br /> B: a bunch of them didn't, yeah. A lot didn't, but a lot did, and they're still around today. So, nutrient availability went into a steep decline because they have all these bio terminators from the future, but it couldn't be stopped. But I also want to end with the fact that it is still a little bit controversial what they were.<br /> <br /> Most scientists seem to think they were an animal of some sort, but there are some that think maybe they were more like algae, or lichens. But there's also another possibility, which I find incredibly intriguing, and that is that they simply belong to a completely different {{w|Kingdom (biology)|kingdom}} of life.<br /> <br /> It makes me think, what would they be like today if they had the past half a billion years to continue to evolve? So, check 'em out online. They're fascinating, and beautiful, and they might just be the first animals that existed, and they were fractals!<br /> <br /> S: It's also my understanding is it's still not entirely clear whether or not the Ediacaran fauna led to the Cambrian fauna.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, exactly.<br /> <br /> S: Or were they completely separate? Again, <br /> <br /> B: Right<br /> <br /> S: Were they wiped out by the Cambrian fauna? Did they just, were they on the way out anyway, and the Cambrian fauna would fill in the gap? We just don't know, I think, what happened.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, it's unclear what the relationship was, whether they were completely distinct and unrelated, or they had some impact on at least some of the new phyla that appeared. Hard to say.<br /> <br /> === Shark Week Pseudoscience &lt;small&gt;(28:56)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5991961/shark-week-is-once-again-making-things-up<br /> <br /> S: Well, we're gonna talk about a different type of {{w|animalcule}}. Jay, I know that you love sharks, and you just love to talk about sharks as often as possible, especially if they're being fired out of tornadoes.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> J: Yeah, well, I did invent that movie, by the way.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, {{w|Sharknado}} movie?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah, I agree.<br /> <br /> J: I did, which is pretty awesome. I happen to love sharks; I think they're fascinating. I just don't want to be in water anywhere near one that could eat me. That's my relationship with sharks. But the {{w|Discovery Channel}} on the other hand has quite a different kind of relationship with sharks. They are completely bilking sharks for all they're worth. They're even bilking sharks that don't even exist for all they're worth.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: So what am I talking about? We got {{w|Shark Week}} that started this week, and a lot of people carve out a lot of personal time to watch it. And apparently, Discovery Channel does very well with Shark Week.<br /> <br /> S: They'll put &lt;I&gt;anything&lt;/I&gt; on the Discovery Channel.<br /> <br /> J: The opening of Shark Week this week started with a show called, &quot;[http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6363/20140811/fake-submarine-shark-documentary-causes-discovery-channel-week-controversy-tv-shark-week-2014-shark-of-darkness-shark-week-drinking-game.htm Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine].&quot;<br /> <br /> (Steve laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It kind of sounds like cave man talk in a way, doesn't it? So this show is about a 35 foot long great white shark. And they say &quot;Wrath of Submarine&quot; because they're saying it's the size of a submarine. And it also, supposedly, attacked people off the coast of {{w|South Africa}}. And the submarine shark actually was an urban legend that was started by a journalist in the 1970's, who were trying to fool and make fun of the public.<br /> <br /> But, what ended up happening was the Discovery Channel's producers apparently heard about that, and they decided that they were gonna make a two hour special about this provable, very easily provable fake folklore. And, it's okay though, guys. Don't worry about it, because they included a brief disclaimer – Evan, settle down – the disclaimer reads, &quot;Its existence is highly controversial. Events have been dramatized, but many believe Submarine exists to this day.&quot;<br /> <br /> E: Well, you know, you could put the word &quot;{{w|leprechaun}}&quot; in there too.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: I mean, that's so ridiculous.<br /> <br /> J: It's existence is not.<br /> <br /> S: Or an {{w|eskimo}}.<br /> <br /> J: It's not highly controversial.<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> J: I have to take apart this sentence because every point that they make is wrong. It's not highly controversial at all because like I just said ...<br /> <br /> S: It's fake.<br /> <br /> J: It was absolutely faked in the 1970's. With very, a little bit of research, you're gonna find that out. &quot;Events have been dramatized.&quot; All events on this particular program were not dramatized, they were completely made up. No one is expanding on the truth here. This is a total and whole cloth, 100% made up.<br /> <br /> &quot;Many believe that Submarine exists to this day.&quot; Yeah? Who? Let's talk to those people that believe that Submarine exists to this day. Here we are with a two hour show that kicks off Shark Week, and I am labeling this as two hour show full of bull shark, thank you. Wow, too bad Rebecca wasn't here, because I really, she would have loved that.<br /> <br /> E: A {{w|bull shark}} is a kind of shark.<br /> <br /> J: Now, look, this is what we can absolutely determine from that particular show that they sharted, they started (chuckling) they sharted.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> B: Sharted! Nice!<br /> <br /> J: That they started Shark Week with.<br /> <br /> (Bob laughs)<br /> <br /> J: It's total BS, and they 100% know it. And you know what? I'll tell you why. They know it, because they made up 100% of the show! So, they know it's BS because they made it all up! There's not a producer there that doesn't know that they made the entire thing up. So, thank you Discovery Channel. Great science, great education, and thanks for not cashing in.<br /> <br /> Last year, they started shark Week, or they at least featured Shark Week with a documentary called, &quot;{{w|Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives}}.&quot; Now, minute amount of research here shows that there's absolutely no proof that there's a {{w|Megalodon}} living today. That Megalodon lived millions of years ago – not thousands, not hundreds – millions of years ago.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's like saying there's a dinosaur around today.<br /> <br /> B: Right. And just for background, a megalodon is pretty much like a {{w|Great white shark|white shark}} on steroids. It was bigger than a bus. What was it? 40, 50 feet long, total meat eater ...<br /> <br /> S: (Accent) Forget about it.<br /> <br /> B: just the nastiest shark that ever lived.<br /> <br /> J: Bob, according to Discovery Channel, there's one hunting around {{w|Florida}}. With all of the people that go to the beach at Florida, and not one legitimate sighting, or one death. But it's there, it's there. Watch it!<br /> <br /> B: I don't know what they're smoking.<br /> <br /> P: You know, I have to say, I've worked with Discovery Channel. Steve, you said they'll put anything on the air, except the 4th episode of my show!<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: That wasn't their fault, but that's (inaudible)<br /> <br /> S: You're not bitter.<br /> <br /> P: No, actually, I'm not. But I've done a lot of shows with Discovery Network since then. {{w|How the Universe Works}}, and a few other Science Channel, and when they do good, they do good. And when they do bad, they screw up. And this was a big screw up, just like it was last year with ''Megalodon''. And they really need to rethink Shark Week because the Discovery Channel and {{w|Science (TV network)|Science Channel}}, their brand is reality! It's science! And this is neither of those. And they need to...<br /> <br /> S: They're destroying their brand.<br /> <br /> P: Yes, they're destroying their brand, and I think they need to<br /> <br /> E: This is ...<br /> <br /> P: apologize for this.<br /> <br /> E: I agree with all that. Isn't this one of their highest rated weeks though?<br /> <br /> B: Oh my god!<br /> <br /> E: Of the year?<br /> <br /> B: It's gargantuan! It's a cultural event!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's part of the public ...<br /> <br /> E: Megalodon of shows!<br /> <br /> J: I have a couple more important points to make here, guys. Listen to what they're actually doing. They interview quite a few legitimate scientists, and what they do is they completely scam them! They pretend that they're filming for a completely different show, they ask them a bunch of questions that are loose in such a way where when the scientist answers them, they already know how they're going to use the answer.<br /> <br /> They're very good at crafting these fake show ideas, and they're asking them questions saying, &quot;Hey, was that shark really big?&quot; And then the scientist goes, &quot;Yeah! That shark was huge!&quot; Right? What shark? They take all these comments out of context, they build a fake show out of it, then they put these poor scientists on the show, and they're like, &quot;Wait a second! I did a show about X, Y, and Z, not the wrath of Submarine! What the hell is this? And that statement I just made wasn't about the Submarine!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So,<br /> <br /> E: They took a page from {{w|Ben Stein|Ben Stein's}} {{w|Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed|Expelled}}.<br /> <br /> J: Right.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I was reminded of here. And that {{w|The Principle|weird geocentric movie}} that came out where {{w|Kate Mulgrew|Captain Janeway}} disavow it. It was all very weird.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: So, I hear ya, Phil. There are different producers at Discovery, and sometimes they make a good show, and sometimes, like Shark Week, some of it, if not a lot of it, is not good. I mean, if you go back to the beginning of Shark Week, when they first came out, it was real science on there!<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: And now it's riddled with garbage, you have a lot of students now going and asking, like, one of the professors, a biologist, was saying, he said 500 students come up and ask him about megalodon. Does it exist? And, you know, no! I'm sorry, it doesn't exist! Where'd you hear that? Shark Week? Yeah, okay, well, that's not true.<br /> <br /> S: And there's so many actual, cool sharks to talk about. I mean, it's not like there's a dearth of material here. You know what my daughter, Julia's favorite shark, or shark-like creature is?<br /> <br /> J: What?<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Helicoprion}}? Did we discuss this guy?<br /> <br /> J: What's it got?<br /> <br /> S: It's an extinct shark-like animal. It's a {{w|eugeneodontid}} {{w|holocephalid}} fish. Sure you guys are familiar with those.<br /> <br /> E: Duh!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It's {{w|Kashrut|kosher}}.<br /> <br /> S: Lived about 310 million years ago. So, it's lower jaw, the teeth in its lower jaw would come out, and then, you know how sharks, they get the perpetual teeth that keep coming out. Well, the old teeth would spiral around and inward, so it literally had a spiral of teeth in its lower jaw, which became like a circular saw.<br /> <br /> B: Oh, wow!<br /> <br /> S: And,<br /> <br /> E: Ouch.<br /> <br /> S: And would, I guess it would just chew things up with that. Look it up, Heliocoprion, totally cool.<br /> <br /> J: I like the {{w|Frilled shark|frill shark}}. And in case you're interested, on the SGU News site, that's [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/news theskepticsguide.org/news], we have a listing of [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/weird-wildlife-wednesday-shark-week-sucks 5 cool sharks] for Weird Wildlife Wednesday, so that this post goes out every Wednesday. We put some interesting wildlife on there. So, we have 5 really cool sharks on there if you want to get real information on real sharks, take a look.<br /> <br /> B: And you have to check out the {{w|goblin shark}}. That is the creepiest shark in existence, and it's alive today. When you see it, you will say, &quot;What the F is that?&quot; It's just an amazingly awesome looking shark. And at first, you're like, &quot;Is that even a shark?&quot; That's how weird it is.<br /> <br /> === Cervical Manipulation and Strokes &lt;small&gt;(37:46)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-statement-on-cervical-manipulation-and-dissections/<br /> <br /> S: The next news item is a very quick update. We've talked before about {{w|cervical manipulation}} and {{w|Dissection (medical)|dissections}}. A dissection is basically a tear on the inside of an artery. When that happens, a {{w|Thrombus|clot}} could form there, which could either block blood flow to the {{w|artery}}, or the clot could go downstream, lodge, and cause a {{w|stroke}}. So, they're very dangerous. They can cause strokes, even death.<br /> <br /> In young people, an arterial dissection, is actually a not uncommon cause of stroke because they otherwise don't have strokes, where they're at lower risk for them.<br /> <br /> One question has been, when {{w|Chiropractic|chiropractors}} do cervical manipulation, does that increase the risk for arterial dissection, specifically for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibial_arteries tibial artery] dissection. The problem is there is no definitive data on this. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to have definitive data on because you can't do the kind of controlled studies that you would need, which is almost universally true when it comes to negative outcomes.<br /> <br /> Like, you can't do something to somebody to see if they get a negative outcome, you know what I mean? So, it's hard to design those studies. That's the reason, for example, why there are no controlled studies linking smoking to lung cancer. They're all {{w|observational studies}}, you know?<br /> <br /> E: Unethical.<br /> <br /> S: You can't say, &quot;You people over there are gonna smoke, and you people are not gonna smoke, and we're gonna see who dies first.&quot; You can't do that.<br /> <br /> So, anyway, recently the {{w|American Heart Association}} and the American Stroke Association came out with a fairly thorough review of cervical arterial dissections, and their association with cervical manipulative therapy. Very good, it's a good summary. It's very thorough. And the bottom line is that they conclude that there &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; an association between manipulation and tibial artery dissection. However, a causal relationship is not proven. Then they go on to recommend caution before getting manipulative therapy.<br /> <br /> I actually thought that their conclusions were overly conservative. And part of it is because they're erring on the side of caution, and there's a few things they didn't consider. One is they put too much stock, I think, in the [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18204390 Cassidy study]. This is now an infamous study where chiropractors looked at the association between dissection and visits to a chiropractor. I'm sorry, they actually looked at the association between stroke and visits to a chiropractor. And stroke a visits to a primary care doctor. And they found that they were about the same. So they said, &quot;See? Therefore, going to a chiropractor doesn't cause stroke.&quot;<br /> <br /> But it was a terrible study. They looked at older patients. Most of the strokes that occur in older patients are not due to dissection. They looked at strokes without ever determining whether or not they were dissections or not. And they didn't find out what people were getting done at their chiropractic visit. So, it was really, really, just sloppy, bad data, that didn't directly address the question. We've [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-and-stroke-evaluation-of-one-paper/ reviewed this study] on [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ Science Based Medicine] before. There's basically, it's basically a fatally flawed study that does not really answer the question.<br /> <br /> But if you talk to chiropractors about this, they'll just say, &quot;The Cassidy study, the Cassidy study! That shows there's no association.&quot; So, and I think that this new review put too much, I think, weight on that study, and underestimated its flaws.<br /> <br /> Secondly, the thing is, yes, you have a correlation here. And correlation does not prove causation. But it can be evidence for causation depending on the type of correlation that you have. Here we have people who go to a chiropractor, and sometimes immediately afterwards, get a dissection and a stroke.<br /> <br /> But if you look at it within 24 hours, that was another problem with the Cassidy study. They looked at a much longer time scale. If you look at it over the next 24 hours in young patients, that there is definitely this correlation. It is in the right sequence to be causative.<br /> <br /> The one legitimate point is that people who have neck pain may go to the chiropractor to treat their neck pain, when in fact it was a dissection all along. And that's what the chiropractors say. But interestingly, that's not that much of a defense because if you have a dissection, the last thing you should do is get your neck manipulated.<br /> <br /> So, saying that, &quot;Oh, we're manipulating people who already have a dissection,&quot; that's &lt;I&gt;hardly&lt;/I&gt; a defence. Does that make sense? You guys understand that?<br /> <br /> J: Sure.<br /> <br /> B: Oh yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, anyway, it was a good review. The data clearly shows an association. There's multiple lines of evidence that show there's a plausible connection there. And, taken all of that, here's the thing. You know, we, in medicine, we look at risk versus benefit. What's the benefit of cervical manipulative therapy? Nothing! There's no proven benefit.<br /> <br /> So, if you have, if it's zero, then even though dissection is rare, it's really serious – stroke and death are bad outcomes. So even though they may be rare, it's still, it's not worth it because there's no evidence of any benefit. What the studies we do have show that doing much gentler manipulation, what we call mobilization, is just as effective, although it's not clear that either of them work.<br /> <br /> But even in the best case scenario, you could get away with just gentle mobilization, and without the risk of dissection. But what's incredible is how angry chiropractors get when you talk about this, and how unwilling they are to look at the risks of their own interventions.<br /> <br /> P: Well, of course! Right? They don't want to hear that they're hurting people.<br /> <br /> E: Bad for business, bad for business.<br /> <br /> S: They don't have the, that's the thing. A culture of business, not a culture of scientific evidence.<br /> <br /> === iPhone Performance &lt;small&gt;(44:49)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> * http://www.zdnet.com/does-apple-throttle-older-iphones-to-nudge-you-into-buying-a-new-one-7000032136/with Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, co-host of Iterate, Debug, Review, The TV Show, Vector, ZEN &amp; TECH, and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Cook, grappler, photon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.<br /> <br /> S: Well, let's move on to our last news item. For this item, we called in an expert. So, let's go to that interview right now.<br /> <br /> (Brief silence)<br /> <br /> S: Joining us now is {{w|Rene Richie}}. Rene, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you so much for having me.<br /> <br /> S: Now, Rene, you're joining us today just for one issue that we want to talk to you about. You're the editor in chief for {{w|iMore}}, which is an online site that is pretty much dedicated to the {{w|iPhone}}, is that accurate?<br /> <br /> RR: It's {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} in general, so iPhone, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|Macintosh|Mac}}, and the related software.<br /> <br /> S: Ok, great. And I understand you're also the cohost of seven different podcasts?<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah, we're gonna reduce that somewhat, but that's currently the case, yes.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, again, we wanted to talk tonight about this charge that Apple deliberately {{w|Bandwidth throttling|throttles}} back the iPhone when a new model update is coming up, so that people will feel frustrated with their iPhone and want to buy the new model. Do you know about this accusation, and what do you think about it?<br /> <br /> RR: It's been leveled previously. The current version was actually an analysis of Big Data, and they were trying to show you why correlation wasn't causality. That because people searched for the term &quot;iPhone slow,&quot; it didn't mean that there was actually anything wrong with the software. It had to do a lot with perception, and with just the fact of running new software on older hardware.<br /> <br /> S: So, the data was showing that people were searching more on the terms of &quot;iPhone slow&quot; just prior to the release of a new model.<br /> <br /> RR: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: That doesn't show that it actually was slower.<br /> <br /> RR: No. Well, a lot of this is perception. So, what usually happens is, two days before a new iPhone is released, Apple releases a new version of the system software, of {{w|iOS}}. And several things happen at that point. So, first, it gets pushed out to tens of millions of people, because Apple has an incredibly unified software ecosystem. And they could be running devices going back several years, so three, maybe four generations.<br /> <br /> And when those people start to download that, first of all, you have a change. It's like, when you buy a blue car. Suddenly, you see all these blue cars. So, because you know something has changed, you're paying more attention than you used to. But also, when you update, a lot of things happen. For example, iOS starts reindexing everything. It starts migrating {{w|Library (computing)|libraries}}. And all of that stuff does add extra overhead at first. But that overhead usually clears out after the first day.<br /> <br /> But by then, because you're already paying more attention, you have sort of a heightened sense of it. And also, it adds new functionality. For example, in one generation, they added multitasking application programming interfaces. In another one, background refresh. And all of this takes more resources. And older devices are more resource constrained.<br /> <br /> Most of them, you can go in and shut off, but by default, they're on. So, on older hardware, you're now running more things, and that comes at the expense of, you know, you can do a few things really, really fast, 'cause you're adding more things, everything wants its fair share of the resources.<br /> <br /> E: But the people actually are making this search. They're doing the Google search for it, and it does, like you said, correlate. However, you're saying it's psychological in that people have this perception that their phone is slowed down, is the cause of this. Is that correct?<br /> <br /> RR: Yes. It's two things. It's the initial updating mechanism itself. It's the new functionality it introduces, which is a heavier load on the device. But it's also the perception. And especially if there are fancy, new features on new hardware that you don't get, you're already a little bit upset by that. So you might be more inclined to find fault than you would otherwise be.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So, it might actually be slower because of the software update. They're not deliberately throttling back the throughput of the phone.<br /> <br /> RR: It's an incredibly tough situation, because they're caught literally between a rock and a hard place. If they don't provide these updates for people, they'll get yelled at. For example, one generation, when they went to the {{w|iPhone 3GS}}, they didn't provide video recording for the previous generation phone. And people were hugely upset. And they got accused of deliberately crippling the previous phone to force people to upgrade.<br /> <br /> So when they don't add features, there's an element of the population that's upset. And when they do, there's an element. But more importantly, by providing these updates, they ensure binary compatibility. So if you, for example, they're gonna release {{w|iOS 8}} in September, and devices that don't get that will not be able to run apps that require IOS 8.<br /> <br /> And that would be, that is an even bigger problem than not having new features, because increasingly, apps are gonna require new versions of the software.<br /> <br /> S: They usually force you to update your iOS, right? I mean, I've used an iPhone and tried to install an app, and it basically forced me to update the IOS before I can install the app.<br /> <br /> RR: There's a, yeah, there's a couple things that happen there. For hardware that can't run it, it won't force you. It will keep you on whatever the last version of that software is. For everything else, the iOS is a security first operating system. Everything about it. Apple published a {{w|white paper}} last year on how elaborate, and how elaborately they were securing iOS as an operating system.<br /> <br /> And part of that is providing software updates and security updates. And when you have operating systems that aren't updated as much, or don't bring tens of millions of people with them, then those become susceptible to exploits, whether it's browser based exploits or apps doing malicious things; and that's not a problem Apple wants their users to have to deal with.<br /> <br /> S: So, it sounds like that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there's the perception of slowness around the time of an iPhone update. But, just to ask flat out, do you think that Apple ever manipulates the performance, or any features of their phones in order to encourage people to buy the new model. Or are they just hoping that people are gonna want to buy it because it's the latest and greatest new thing?<br /> <br /> RR: I think that, first of all, I think they don't do that, because part of the experience of buying a new iPhone, part of the value of buying a new iPhone is that you know that Apple's gonna support it for a certain period of time; and if they get a reputation for not supporting it, or for doing anything duplicitous with it, that would no longer be the case; and they will lose that value. And people might look elsewhere for their phones.<br /> <br /> But also, because, especially in North America, where there's the carrier contract cycle. Traditionally, it was 2 years, and you could basically get a new phone either cheaply, or even for free on some carriers. And now carriers have accelerated update programs where you pay a little bit more, but you can get cheaper phones faster.<br /> <br /> So, I think Apple knows that people are gonna update their phones regularly. Two generations is not a long period of time. So, there's even less incentive for anyone to do that.<br /> <br /> And just anecdotally, it seems, based on prior history that they do everything they can to bring as many features as they can, and do as much performance as they can, forward. Now, they're constrained in resources, which sounds silly because they're a hundred billion dollar company, but there's only so many engineers. You know, {{w|Facebook}} is hiring. {{w|Google}} is hiring. Not everyone wants to move to {{w|Cupertino, California|Cupertino}}. There's startup culture to deal with.<br /> <br /> But they devote as much resources as they can to make sure older devices get as much attention as they can.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. There's enough competition from {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} that they have to keep their customers happy.<br /> <br /> RR: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> E: Now, but why did these con- ... you said that this had been happening for some time. This is not a new conspiracy theory; it's been happening for several years. You know, the last few releases of the iPhone, and stuff. So, is your work having an effect on peoples' understanding of what's going on? Or is it just too big an ocean to hold back, in a sense.<br /> <br /> RR: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's the same in any area of science where you – I'm not relating this to a science in any way – but, you always have people who are skeptical; and you always have people who are inclined to distrust large companies, or to just distrust any point of view, or disagree with it. So there'll always be someone coming along.<br /> <br /> And for example, I think that recent article in {{w|New York Times}} was an example of this because toward the bottom of that article, they state very clearly that this was about Big Data, and about the dangers of mistaking correlation for causation in Big Data. And that article was widely reblogged as &quot;Apple has a conspiracy!&quot;<br /> <br /> S: It's the opposite.<br /> <br /> RR: And that shows me there's a profound lack of (chuckles) reading going on.<br /> <br /> S: Absolutely. Alright, well, Rene, thank you so much for straightening all that out for us.<br /> <br /> RR: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored.<br /> <br /> E: Thanks Rene.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, take care.<br /> <br /> RR: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Who's That Noisy &lt;small&gt;(52:35)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> * Answer to last week: Luray Caverns Stalactite Organ<br /> <br /> S: Well, Evan, it's time to catch us up on Who's That Noisy.<br /> <br /> E: Okay, Steve. And we'll play for you last week's Who's That Noisy, this little diddy that we played for you. Here we go!<br /> <br /> (Piano-like instrument plays a snippet of music)<br /> <br /> E: Right? You guys remember that?<br /> <br /> S: Oh yeah!<br /> <br /> J: I do.<br /> <br /> E: Now, Steve, you had told me last week off the air, that you knew exactly what that was.<br /> <br /> S: I recognized it, because I've been there. I've physically been there.<br /> <br /> E: And where is there, in this context?<br /> <br /> S: Those are at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns Luray Caverns] in Virginia.<br /> <br /> E: Luray. L-U-R-A-Y, correct.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, the {{w|Luray Caverns}} in {{w|Virginia}}. It's the {{w|The Great Stalacpipe Organ|largest stalactite organ}}. Those caverns are beautiful. If you're definitely in that part of the country, it's worth a quick stop off to go down there. But yeah, I remember that. I remember that they had the stalactites tuned to different notes, and it's like all over the cavern. You're standing in the middle of it. It's all over the cavern, different stalactites are played.<br /> <br /> J: And I'm sure that that sound fills up the cavern, huh Steve?<br /> <br /> S: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: It is technically the largest instrument in the world. So it holds that distinction. The stalactites cover three and a half acres if you can believe that. And it produces these tones when electronically tapped by rubber tipped mallets. It was invented in 1954 by Leland W Sprinkle of {{w|Springfield, Virginia}}, who was a mathematician and electronic scientist at the Pentagon.<br /> <br /> Very cool. So he put his vast basis of knowledge to good use here making this amazing instrument. I want to get down there some time. We had a lot of correct answers for this one. Actually, we had a lot of incorrect ones as well. It was a good week for responses.<br /> <br /> A lot of people thought this was perhaps the {{w|glass harmonica}}, the invention of {{w|Benjamin Franklin}} from way back when. But that was actually a Noisy from many years ago. We've actually already covered that one. So, well done to everyone who guessed correctly. And this week's winner is James Letham. We drew your name of all the correct ones. So, congratulations. Your name will go in the year-end drawing.<br /> <br /> And we want to send a thank you out to Holly Michol for sending me the suggestion to use it as last week's Who's Than Noisy. Thank you Holly; we do appreciate that.<br /> <br /> Now, for this week, wait 'till you get a load of this. This is ... yeah. I'm gonna let it speak for itself because I'm almost at a loss as to what to say here. Here you go; enjoy.<br /> <br /> (Two women speaking)<br /> <br /> ??: 90% of the psychics working are fakes .<br /> <br /> ?: They are.<br /> <br /> ??: Well, we're the most documented psychics in the world. And don't go to a psychic unless they have a proven track record of accurate predictions. Seriously, you'll waste your money.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I agree that you will waste your money, yeah.<br /> <br /> E: (Chuckles) Yeah, don't waste your money on the bogus psychics. Only go to the real ones, because 90% of them are bogus. 10% are real. Want to know who you think said that. And you have to let us know. Let us know by email, WTN@theskepticsguide.org. That's the email address for Who's That Noisy related items. Or if you want, go on to our message boards. [http://sguforums.com/ Sguforums.com], and look for the link called Who's That Noisy, or the thread, I should say. Who's That Noisy, and post your guess there. Should be fun. We'll reveal it next week. Good luck everyone.<br /> <br /> S: Thank you Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Thank you.<br /> <br /> == Questions and Emails ==<br /> === Question #1: Ebola Virus Follow up &lt;small&gt;(56:19)&lt;/small&gt; ===<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, we have a couple of quick updates. Actually, one is a correction from last week. Jay, you talked about the {{w|2014 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak|Ebola Virus}}.<br /> <br /> J: I did.<br /> <br /> S: I got a few emails correcting us on one point.<br /> <br /> J: I only got one thing wrong on the whole news item. That's pretty good.<br /> <br /> S: Well, I'm not saying that. This is the one that people pointed out.<br /> <br /> J: Well, I got something wrong. Apparently, the ... in last week's show, I said that there is an {{w|incubation period}} from when you catch the virus until when you actually start to show symptoms, and it was, what? I believe I said 2 ... You catch it from 2 to 5 days, and you could not show symptoms up to day 21, I believe, were the correct numbers.<br /> <br /> S: It's yeah, so the, yeah, 2 to 21 days is the incubation period.<br /> <br /> J: So, during the incubation period, you are most likely, you're not able to give the virus to somebody else.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> J: You're not shedding in a way that you're gonna give it to other people.<br /> <br /> S: So, yeah, by definition, you're asymptomatic. And essentially, and I've read multiple sources on this, there's actually some misinformation out there. Some sites say that you &lt;I&gt;can&lt;/I&gt; transmit it during the incubation period. But I did find published studies showing that when patients are not symptomatic, they do not seem to be contagious.<br /> <br /> So, during incubation period, it looks like they're not contagious. But I don't, I think that some sites were unwilling to commit to the idea that there's no way to transmit the virus while you're in the incubation period because it seems that as long as the virus is in your system, it's possible to give it to another person.<br /> <br /> So, it's not &lt;I&gt;very&lt;/I&gt; contagious, but I mean, I don't think we could say 100% that there's no way to transmit it when you're in the incubation period. It's just that there's less of the virus around, so you're gonna be transmitting less in body fluids, or with direct, physical contact.<br /> <br /> === The Hobbit follow up &lt;small&gt;(58:14)&lt;/small&gt;===<br /> S: Alright, one other quick follow up. We talked about the hobbit last week.<br /> <br /> E: 4 hobbitses!<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Homo floresiensis}}. So, I mentioned that there are essentially two schools of thought; one that the fossils represent a new {{w|Hominidae|hominid}} species; the other that it's a homo sapiens that's either just ... a pygmy, or a diseased individual, developmental problem; and scientists published a new study claiming that it was a person with {{w|Down syndrome}}.<br /> <br /> Although I said, &quot;I don't think this is necessarily gonna be the last word, not until I hear from the scientists claiming this is a new species, that they acquiesce. So, in the interim, I did find that there are scientists who are already disagreeing with the Down syndrome conclusion.<br /> <br /> They're saying that the researchers were {{w|Cherry picking (fallacy)|cherry picking}} features; they were ignoring features such as the anatomy of the wrist, which is very primitive, which can't be explained on the basis of Down syndrome, and therefore that's really not a good explanation. The authors, like, [https://profiles.psu.edu/profiles/display/113050 Eckhardt], who were saying that it is Down's syndrome, are rejecting those criticisms.<br /> <br /> So, bottom line: This fight isn't over. The two sides are sticking to their guns. Basically, sticking to their position; one side saying it's a new species of hominid; the other saying that it's a diseased homo sapiens. And the controversy continues and certainly may not be resolved definitively until we find new specimens; that may be the case.<br /> <br /> E: Sounds like an {{w|ad hominem}} attack.<br /> <br /> == Science or Fiction &lt;small&gt;(1:01:34)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/mummifying-balm-recipe-is-older-than-the-pharaohs-1.15717 Item #1]: An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/448758a.html Item #2]: For the first time a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal.<br /> [http://www.nature.com/news/near-earth-asteroid-held-together-by-weak-force-1.15713 Item #3]: A new study finds that certain “rubble asteroids” are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake! Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake! Is everyone ready for this week?<br /> <br /> B: Yes.<br /> <br /> S: You have three interesting news items this week, no theme though.<br /> <br /> P: I don't think I've ever gotten this right. Maybe some SGU historians would know, for the dozen times I've been on the show, I really don't think I've ever been right.<br /> <br /> S: (Chuckling) Okay, well you got one more shot.<br /> <br /> P: Even when I've known, like, one of them was real or something.<br /> <br /> B: It's true!<br /> <br /> S: Alright, here we go. #1: An examination of certain {{w|Cro-Magnon}} remains suggests that a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. Item #2: For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental {{w|metal}}. And item #3: A new study finds that certain {{w|Rubble pile|rubble asteroids}} are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved.<br /> <br /> Phil, I'm gonna go easy on you. I won't make you go first. I'll improve your chances of getting it correct. So, Jay, why don't you go first?<br /> <br /> J: The first one about Cro-Magnon remains, and that they used some type of Egyptian-like mummification techniques. I don't see that being that wild. I could see them doing some things that because this is so unclear. They could have done certain things to help preserve the body, maybe they found some naturally occurring plant or whatever, and they ... I could just see them finding herbs and whatnot that could have done something.<br /> <br /> And because this one is not that clear, you know, you said it's not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't know what the &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques were. I know what the later techniques definitely were. But I'm not crystal clear if there was a big variation between early and late. So that one's a maybe.<br /> <br /> Okay, so now we go on to #2, and this one is about creating a glass out of elemental metal. If I were to strictly define glass, I'm pretty sure that glass is made out of sand. Right out of the gate I can draw a line to where it seems like it might just be BS. I'm not sure about this one.<br /> <br /> And then finally, the one about the rubble asteroids, and that there's some sort of &lt;I&gt;unknown&lt;/I&gt; or unidentified force keeping them together. I really don't like that. I don't like the unidentified force idea. It doesn't mean that it's a force that has never been discovered, or studied; it means that some other force that we're not sure which one it is, is holding these asteroids together.<br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that the elemental metal one is the fake.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Evan.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon remains suggesting a mummification process was used, not unlike early Egyptian techniques. I don't have a problem with this one, really. You know, the strange thing being that it ties into the same techniques, or similar techniques that the Egyptians used, but ... how many different kinds of ways can you mummify people? I imagine there are several. But that the earlier people, Cro-Magnons, stumbled upon a way of doing it, and certain Cro-Magnon remains, right? So, parts of the body then? Maybe the head or something? So, I think that one's gonna be right.<br /> <br /> The one for creating glass out of elemental metal. So, my first thought was that, how you gonna ... my first vision of glass is that it's clear. But I guess the glass didn't have to be clear, otherwise, how are you gonna get elemental metal to come out clear? I don't know if that's been really happening yet in the world of science. So, I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> The last one, the rubble asteroids held together by more than their mutual gravity – an &lt;I&gt;unidentified&lt;/I&gt; force is involved. I guess, what? The math doesn't work out exactly? That if you just take gravity, there's something missing? And therefore, whatever it is has to, is otherwise unidentified. I don't know about that one.<br /> <br /> But the one about glass kind of struck me the wrong way. I don't know that they've really figured that out yet. So I think I'm gonna lean with Jay, and go with that one, that the elemental metal one is the fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Okay. Bob?<br /> <br /> B: Let's see. The Cro-Magnon mummification. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. That just seems a little too sophisticated. I mean, I know they were people, just like us. It's not like they were Neanderthals, they were just a race of people. So it's not like they had any mental shortcomings to potentially figuring that out, but it just seems like {{w|Egypt}} had a well developed culture that this mummification process grew up in. I just think the Cro-Magnons just didn't have anything near that. But, then again, what do you mean by &lt;I&gt;early&lt;/I&gt; Egyptian techniques?<br /> <br /> See, we've got the creating glass. Yeah, I don't have much of a problem with that one. I guess the key fact here is that it's &lt;I&gt;elemental&lt;/I&gt;? But I just can't think of a reason why they couldn't make some sort of, you know, what is it, amorphous, non-crystalline solid out of metal. That would pretty much make it a glass. I mean, glass doesn't have to be glass as we know it. There's lots of different types of glasses.<br /> <br /> The rubble asteroid. Yeah, I could imagine some sort of, some force that hasn't been identified. It would be cool if it was some effect, like, say, the {{w|van der Waals force}}, that we just, similar to that, that we haven't identified – that's how {{w|Gecko|geckos}} and spiders can crawl on anything. Using those intermolecular forces.<br /> <br /> I don't think it's necessarily that, but that would be interesting if that's true. Probably have some impact on how we deal with asteroids too if its ... <br /> <br /> I'm gonna say that, something about the mummy one is rubbing me wrong. I'm gonna say that one's fiction.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, the three rogues are trying to help you out. What do you think?<br /> <br /> P: Okay, well, I'm going to cheat, because it just so happens the rubble asteroids one is the one I know about. I'm the last one, right?<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: That one I know is true.<br /> <br /> J: Alright!<br /> <br /> (Evan laughs)<br /> <br /> P: So, I'll throw that out there, because I have to. My hand has been forced. There's an asteroid named DA-50, or {{w|(29075) 1950 DA|1950 DA}}, that is spinning so quickly, that if it were just a rubble pile, it would fly apart. And so there must be some other force holding it together. The problem is, I have only seen a press release and not a paper. But that one is right. So, I will push that one aside.<br /> <br /> Now, the other two. &quot;For the first time, scientists have developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal!&quot; A {{w|glass}} is an amorphous solid, which can go from a brittle state to a liquid, to a gloppy state in this transition. I happen to know that. That strikes me as being true. There are metals that are brittle under certain circumstances, and I can imagine that if you do something to them, they can become an amorphous solid, like a glass. I don't know this one, I have not heard this at all. I expect it is one of these things where it's happening under tremendous pressure, like in the centers of planets or something like that.<br /> <br /> B: Yeah, that's a good bet.<br /> <br /> P: That's what I'm guessing is going on. So that one has the ring of truth. The first one, &quot;An examination of Cro-Magnon remains suggest a mummification process.&quot; That one bugs me because I don't think Cro-Magnon, I want to say that they had, they buried their dead, but they did, they had jewelry, and things like that, I think. But it never really got past that. So this idea of mummification, which kind of indicates an understanding of death a little bit more than maybe, that I ... the last time I read anything about what their culture was like, it was a while ago. So my memory on this is fuzzy.<br /> <br /> But that one strikes me as being too much. So, I think the glass one is real, the asteroid one is real, and the Cro-Magnon remains being mummified is the fiction.<br /> <br /> B: Good choice, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright! So, we got an even split, but you all agree that a new study finds that certain rubble asteroids are held together by more than their mutual gravity, and that some other unidentified force is involved. You all think that one is science, and that one is ...<br /> <br /> Now, what do you think the force might be that &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; holding the asteroid together if this one were to be true?<br /> <br /> P: {{w|Dark energy}}!<br /> <br /> E: Undetermined, yeah.<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you ...<br /> <br /> E: (Inaudible)&lt;!-- Nuclear? --&gt; forcing! I dunno.<br /> <br /> B: {{w|Wink Martindale}}!<br /> <br /> S: Let me read you the actual headline in Nature. &quot;Near Earth asteroid held together by weak force.&quot;<br /> <br /> P: Really! That's what they said? O-h-h-h!<br /> <br /> S: This one is true. This one is science.<br /> <br /> B: The {{w|Weak interaction|weak force}}?<br /> <br /> S: That headline caught my eye. I'm like, &quot;Really? The weak nuclear force?&quot;<br /> <br /> B: No way! I'm sure, no!<br /> <br /> P: The weak force!<br /> <br /> E: They don't know what they're saying!<br /> <br /> P: It's &lt;I&gt;a&lt;/I&gt; weak force.<br /> <br /> S: &lt;I&gt;A&lt;/I&gt; weak force. It's not &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force!<br /> <br /> B: Yes!<br /> <br /> J: So, what was it!<br /> <br /> S: That one is true. So, it's 1950 DA. And it is spinning so it goes around once every 2.1 hours. However, gravity could only hold it together so that it could spin at once every 2.2 hours. So it's spinning a little faster than gravity would allow. It should be flinging apart. So there must be something else sticking the rocks together, and it's weak, because you don't need that much. But they make no speculation as to what that is.<br /> <br /> They know it's a rubble pile asteroid because of its density. Rocks, but it's much less dense than rocks. So it's got to be a lot of air pockets in there. It has the characteristics that we've come to associate with these so-called rubble-pile asteroid.<br /> <br /> P: Not really air pockets; it's out in space.<br /> <br /> S: Well, yeah, you know what I mean. (Phil laughs) Vacuum pockets.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah. I think they just call 'em cavities.<br /> <br /> S: Cavities, yeah.<br /> <br /> J: But, Steve, couldn't it really just be some type of liquid that is making things stick together more?<br /> <br /> S: I don't know.<br /> <br /> B: Liquid in space?<br /> <br /> P: Well, I tell ya, I got a press release about this a couple of hours ago, which is how I knew about it.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And the press release actually says it might be a van der Waals force.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: It's like a {{w|surface tension}}.<br /> <br /> S: Almost like a surface tension for solids.<br /> <br /> P: It's more like a surface tension, yeah. And it's, what's interesting is they said that, and there's no explanation of it. It just says, &quot;A team studied near Earth asteroid 1950-DA, and discovered that the body is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals forces.&quot; But that's it. They just declare that. There's no link to a paper. So I didn't even see the paper.<br /> <br /> S: Well, {{w|Nature (journal)|Nature}} has a little bit more. This is not the original paper, but they go into more detail.<br /> <br /> P: Well, the funny thing here is that the press release has two errors in it. It says that another asteroid was caught by the {{w|Hubble Space Telescope}} is falling apart, possibly due to a collision with a meteor. No, it wasn't a meteor. (Steve laughs) It was another asteroid. (Evan laughs) Meteor is the thing that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: And then it also says the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} spacecraft landed on the comet {{w|67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko}}. It said it landed on the comet's surface last week. And it's like, no! It's actually moving along with the comet. It's going to send off a lander in November. So, the press release doesn't have the information I wanted, and it has a couple of mistakes in it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.<br /> <br /> S: Don't you think that that was an unfortunate headline choice by calling it ...<br /> <br /> P: Held together by the weak force!<br /> <br /> S: Held together by weak force. I mean, you used the term &quot;weak force,&quot; and you don't think people are gonna think that's &lt;I&gt;the&lt;/I&gt; weak force?<br /> <br /> We'll go back to #1. An examination of certain Cro-Magnon remains suggests that a mummification process was used not unlike Egyptian techniques. Evan and Jay think this is science. Bob and Phil think this one is the fiction. And this one is ... Now, is it Cro-Manyon? Or Cro-Magnon?<br /> <br /> P: It's French. It's Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's Cro-Manyon. It's like {{w|Neanderthal}} and Neandertal. Although I've gone back to Neanderthal because I just, screw it, it sounds better. But, yeah, it is Cro-Manyon.<br /> <br /> E: Cro-Magnon for short.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. So they, Cro-Magnon were fully modern humans. They were European upper {{w|paleolithic}} humans, basically, from the region of {{w|France}}. Around 43,000 years ago. So they're just basically a race, if you will, or a population of early humans. So, there's no reason to think they weren't roughly as intelligent as we are.<br /> <br /> But, this one is ... the fiction!<br /> <br /> P: Yes! Hoa! Hoa!<br /> <br /> S: You did it, Phil! You did it!<br /> <br /> E: Well done, Phil.<br /> <br /> P: Yay!<br /> <br /> E: I'm happy for you, and Bob (inaudible).<br /> <br /> J: I had to lose, right Ev? It's good to give Phil a win.<br /> <br /> E: Absolutely.<br /> <br /> S: Did any of you see the actual news item?<br /> <br /> P: No.<br /> <br /> E: Hell, no.<br /> <br /> S: So, what they &lt;I&gt;did&lt;/I&gt; find was Egyptian mummies about 2000 years older than they thought they were making them. This was a study published in Plos One. So ...<br /> <br /> P: That's a long time. Holy cow!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, so, prior to this, the earliest known use of {{w|resin}} for mummification was around 2200 BC, or BCE depending on your preference. And this one, they found, because, well, these are actually, these were funerary wrappings from grave sites near the {{w|Nile|Nile river}} called {{w|Mastaba}}. They were excavated in the 1920's and 30's. But, you know, things like this sit around museums for decades, and then people decide to take a look at them. They were carbon dated to 4200 BC.<br /> <br /> E: 42!<br /> <br /> S: So, they were looking at the wrappings, and not only did they date to between ... the oldest was 4200 BC. The more recent one was 3150. And then, under microscopic examination, they found the linens were impregnated with certain resins, similar to the resins used in later mummification. About 5 to 20% of the blend was made up of pine resin. And they also found evidence that these resins were deliberately heated, which is part of the technique, you know, if you're trying to do it for mummification.<br /> <br /> So this is essentially, their use of these resins as an antibacterial, to protect the body from bacterial decay. So, part of the mummification process. So, the Egyptian mummification tradition goes back a lot farther than we thought!<br /> <br /> J: That's really cool.<br /> <br /> P: That's very cool!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?<br /> <br /> P: I have to admit something here, and that is I, for some reason, in my brain got neanderthals and Cro-Magnon backwards. And that's why I thought this one was wrong. I was thinking they were neanderthals. And neanderthals ...<br /> <br /> S: Got it right for the wrong reason.<br /> <br /> P: I got it right for ... well, in fact ...<br /> <br /> E: That actually counts, Phil? To trust me?<br /> <br /> B: (Laughing) Yeah, yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I think I still would have, I still would have gone the way I did because I still think the metal thing is real. So, I'm being honest here, I would fully admit it if I were, you know.<br /> <br /> S: That's funny, because when you were describing that, I'm like, &quot;God, that's actually a better description of neanderthals, what he's saying,&quot; but ...<br /> <br /> P: Yeah, it's because that's what it was.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, okay.<br /> <br /> P: (Growls) Okay. So, tell us about metals.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, yeah. For the first time, a scientist has developed a technique for creating glass out of elemental metal. That one is very cool science. I love the {{w|materials science}}. This is also published in, where was it? This was published in {{w|Jounral of Materials Science|Materials Science}}. The name of the article is &quot;Metal Turned to Glass.&quot;<br /> <br /> A single author, [http://www.lptmc.jussieu.fr/users/tarjus Gilles Tarjus], T-A-R-J-U-S. So, here's the thing. Glass is not just the kind of stuff that we make our windows out of. It is a solid that is amorphous, and essentially, solids have a tendency to crystallize, right? For their molecules to form particular arrangement.<br /> <br /> Metals themselves have a tremendous propensity to crystallize when they cool. So, if you melt a metal, turn it into a liquid, and then cool it, it will, it really wants to crystallize. And so far, scientists have not figured out how to get any elemental metal - meaning just one element – to not crystallize as it cools.<br /> <br /> They have been able to use a couple of alloys. So they have been able to make some metal glass using specific alloys. If you remember, not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year or so ago now, we talked about actual {{w|Aluminium oxynitride|transparent aluminum}}. Remember that?<br /> <br /> E: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: They made, it was an alloy of aluminum and other things. I think they had {{w|sapphire}} in there? But this was elemental {{w|germanium}}. And Phil, you are absolutely correct that they used extreme pressure ...<br /> <br /> P: Ah-ha!<br /> <br /> S: ... in order to get the germanium to cool without crystallizing. To keep its liquid amorphous structure ...<br /> <br /> P: Oh!<br /> <br /> S: ... as a solid.<br /> <br /> P: That does make sense.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: Okay, yeah yeah yeah.<br /> <br /> S: What I could not find out though, is whether or not it's clear, it's transparent. It just says it has the properties of a glass. But it didn't specifically say if it was transparent.<br /> <br /> P: I don't know if glass has to be transparent or not.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah. It's doesn't &lt;I&gt;have&lt;/I&gt; to be because you have ...<br /> <br /> P: If it's a pure substance, I mean, I've got glass here. I've got some {{w|Libyan desert glass|Libyan glass}}, which is impact glass from an asteroid impact ...<br /> <br /> E: Cool!<br /> <br /> P: ... in the desert, in the {{w|Sahara}}. And it's very sort of milky yellow and green.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, well, is it {{w|Obsidian|obsidian glass}}, and that's black!<br /> <br /> P: Oh, yeah!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah.<br /> <br /> P: I have obsidian too! It's gorgeous! But yeah, you're right. It's glass!<br /> <br /> S: Obsidian is cool. Yeah. And it's, and the name is so cool. Obsidian. I love it.<br /> <br /> (Rogues laugh)<br /> <br /> P: In fact, it was used as spear heads by Cro-Magnons! So there you go.<br /> <br /> E: The knights of the obsidian order.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, exactly, exactly.<br /> <br /> P: I believe Cro-Magnon man used obsidean to ward off asteroids. So that ties all three of these together.<br /> <br /> S: There we go.<br /> <br /> E: Alright! So we're all correct in a way.<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Phil, so congratulations.<br /> <br /> P: Yay! Right for the wrong reason! I will take it!<br /> <br /> S: (Laughs) Absolutely, take it!<br /> <br /> == Skeptical Quote of the Week &lt;small&gt;(1:19:31)&lt;/small&gt; ==<br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' - George Washington.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> S: Alright, Jay, do you have a quote for us?<br /> <br /> J: Steve, I have a quote sent in by a listener named Joel Stein. Joel is from {{w|Redding, California}}. And he sent me a quote in by {{w|George Washington}}, and here it is: <br /> <br /> &lt;blockquote&gt;'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> <br /> (Shouting) George Washington!<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, isn't that, yeah, some story about not telling a lie about cutting down a cherry tree?<br /> <br /> E: I think that's a lie.<br /> <br /> P: He also stood up in a boat.<br /> <br /> E: No, I hear that's a fiction too. He didn't stand up in that boat.<br /> <br /> S: Probably everything is a fiction.<br /> <br /> E: It was too cold that night, and he had a big, old, heavy coat, and he hunkered down like everybody else. But, the portrait tells otherwise.<br /> <br /> S: Right. The portrait &lt;I&gt;is&lt;/I&gt; history.<br /> <br /> E: Right.<br /> <br /> P: Is there any evidence he really existed?<br /> <br /> E: Yes there is.<br /> <br /> S: They still have his ivory teeth.<br /> <br /> E: And there is a university named after him.<br /> <br /> S: Sure there is some other stuff. (Evan snickers) Phil, Phil, I got a question for ya before we close up the show.<br /> <br /> P: Sure.<br /> <br /> S: {{w|Peter Capaldi}}, what do you think?<br /> <br /> P: I'm all for it! I have never been disappointed in a new doctor. I have always been saddened by the last one leaving, and then the next person comes in, and I'm always like, &quot;Well ...&quot; But you know what? They wind up being awesome every time! So, I'm good.<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I think {{w|David Tennant}} is still my favorite. Like I said, everyone's supposed to have their one favorite Doctor. But, yeah! I'm looking forward to Peter Capaldi. First of all, he's in his 50's. So, he's &lt;I&gt;our&lt;/I&gt; age.<br /> <br /> P: Yeah.<br /> <br /> S: And I think doctors have been getting too young recently. I think this is a good move.<br /> <br /> P: Well, I was concerned. I wrote about this, saying if you go from {{w|Christopher Eccleston}}, to David Tennant, to {{w|Matt Smith}}, and extrapolate that, the 13th doctor's going to be a fetus. So, Peter Capaldi, I think, is gonna be interesting. And he's also put his foot down, and said, &quot;No romance!&quot; So ...<br /> <br /> S: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, he's not gonna have a romance with his much younger companion. Look forward to it. This is Doctor Who, by the way, if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about.<br /> <br /> Well, Phil, always a pleasure to have you on the show. We have to do this more often.<br /> <br /> P: This was fun! Yay!<br /> <br /> B: Thanks, Phil!<br /> <br /> S: Alright guys, thanks for joining me this week.<br /> <br /> J: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you, Steve.<br /> <br /> P: Thanks Steve!<br /> <br /> E: (Aristocratic accent) Thank you doctor.<br /> <br /> B: Surely Steve!<br /> <br /> S: And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.<br /> <br /> {{Outro404}}<br /> <br /> == Today I Learned ==<br /> *A Coronal mass ejection nearly wiped out Earth's electronics two years ago&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/08/01/solar_storm_a_massive_2012_cme_just_missed_the_earth.htmlhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-carrington-event-inevitable/ Coronal mass ejection could have caused major damage to Earth's electronics]&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> *Lungs have a surface area of [http://books.google.ca/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&amp;lpg=PA120&amp;dq=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;pg=PA119#v=onepage&amp;q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&amp;f=false 70 square meters]<br /> *Phil Plait said this was his first time winning science or fiction<br /> <br /> == References ==<br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Navigation}} &lt;!-- inserts images that link to the previous and next episode pages --&gt;<br /> <br /> {{Page categories<br /> |Guest Rogues = y &lt;!-- Phil Plait (475) --&gt;<br /> |Interview = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |Amendments = y &lt;!-- Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Astronomy &amp; Space Science = y &lt;!-- Coronal mass ejection misses Earth (475) Rubble asteroids held together by more than gravity (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Conspiracy Theories = y &lt;!-- Rene Ritchie interview: iPhone Performance (475) --&gt;<br /> |General Science = y &lt;!-- Glass created from Germanium (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |History = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) Early Egyptian mummification (475 SoF) --&gt;<br /> |Nature &amp; Evolution = y &lt;!-- Rangeomorphs (475) Hobbit follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Religion &amp; Faith = y &lt;!-- Urbain Grandier burned at the stake (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; Medicine = y &lt;!-- Cervical manipulation and strokes (475) Ebola virus follow up (475) --&gt;<br /> |Science &amp; the Media = y &lt;!-- Shark Week pseudoscience (475) --&gt;<br /> |Technology = y &lt;!-- Luray Caverns stalactite organ (475) --&gt;<br /> }}</div>

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