SGU Episode 1047

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SGU Episode 1047
August 2nd 2025
"Futuristic design meets renewable energy: the innovative Radia Windrunner concept."
SGU 1046                      SGU 1048
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.”
― Baruch Spinoza
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Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, July 30th, 2025 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

E: Hey everybody.

S: Cara Santa Maria.

C: Howdy.

S: And Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: Jay is on break this week. He's actually on his way to Alaska. He might be there by now, I'm not sure.

E: Flying, I hope.

S: Yes, flying to Alaska, it's a.

E: Hell of a drive.

S: And while he's there, he's going to visit with Bob's daughter, who works in Alaska.

B: Ashley, I Ashley, wish I could be there. Move back to Connecticut.

E: Where in Alaska is it? Juneau is it?

B: GERD, an hour from Anchorage. Gerd.

E: So the greater anchorage.

B: So I found an interesting Reddit post that got my attention and within 15 seconds I emailed the entire SDU crew about it. It's like whoa.

C: I have not read it. What was it? What was it?

S: It's a video.

C: Oh, it's a video, OK.

B: This is Doctor Peter Carter. Dr. Peter Carter, expert IPCC reviewer and director of Climate Emergency Institute. Basically he he's calling it, he joins David Suzuki in official recognition of unavoidable end game on planet climate and Homo sapiens. And that's a weird ending to that sentence, but it's.

E: The beginning of the end.

B: So I didn't see the full video, Steve. So what was? What was your take on it?

S: You know, I disagree with him.

B: Also, well, good, because it was a little concerning that this guy would be saying game over kids.

S: The game isn't over, I.

B: Mean. That's never it.

E: Well, it can never.

B: Be right, right could always make it less worse than it would have been if you didn't do anything. So that's why it could always surprise. But his But his pessimism seemed extraordinary. Like it's too late. We're doomed.

S: It's fine to be doesn't Mystic and the specific things that he's saying are correct. It's just the way he's framing it as quote UN quote, too late, which is bullshit. And that's what, you know, as we discussed with Michael Mann when he was on the show last time.

B: Right man.

S: That's the latest denialist strategy. Well, it's too late, so why do anything do?

C: You think it's that, Well, I don't know, this is a devil's advocate position because I don't know, really like we're not inside of his head. But do you think that it's that like the emergency, emergency like that, that approach isn't working? And so saying like we're past the point guys, like we are effed is, is that a hope that people will act?

S: It's fine to say he's not calling for action. He's saying the fossil fuel industry won, the climate deniers have won, the big bankers who are backing it all have won. We have lost. Game over. He doesn't think we could now that we have the capability to do anything about it. So it's not that he's saying that interventions won't have any effect, right? Like what we're saying is it could be worse if we do something, it will still make it less bad, etcetera, etcetera. He's saying, yeah, whatever. Even if that's true, we have lost the political game. It's the political game is over. We lost. And so nothing is going to change, you know, and I think the final nail in the coffin for him, as you know, as he said, it was Trump's election because in his mind that represents the victory of all of those forces, the victory for climate denial, for fossil fuel, for the the current economy as it is set up and.

C: Yeah, but in four years that'll all change again.

S: In exactly.

E: Well, yeah. So definitely can.

C: 1 Presidential election is not permanent.

E: Right. I I don't find this dialogue helpful that when they when people say these things, things like this.

B: Here's one quote from the video. I assume it was him saying this, but the IPCC 6th assessment said that global emissions had to be in decline by 2025 at the latest. 25 at the latest this year. It's too late. So. So it's basically this big.

S: Deadline too late for what?

B: What we have?

S: To say for what it does to avoid, you know, negative consequences, so.

C: Yeah, but we already know we're too late to avoid negative. Yeah, we know. We've been there.

S: No, we are too late to avoid negative consequences. Sure, that's not a big revelation, but. But the problem is, you know, when you throw up your hands in defeat, it's not too late to continue to work on this. You know what I mean? I'm, I'm, I mean, why? You know, why give up and defeat. That's completely worthless strategy.

C: Also, I'm sorry, but we're not the only country in the world. True. Why such an America centric? I mean, I get that we have sort of an outsized influence and that this administration is quite detrimental, but other places are doing really big things and there are a lot of people within our borders that are doing really big things. I don't know. Yeah, that's true.

S: I mean the numbers are still haven't turned around. The amount, the amount of CO2 we're releasing into the atmosphere is still increasing every year, you know, barring COVID and things like that, barring temp short term temporary reversals. But the overall trend is still up. We have not turned the ship around yet.

C: No, it's not.

S: Yeah, we which we have said all of this like we said the yes, we are increasing our renewable portfolio. We are building a lot of wind and solar, but to the but that's just the increase in our energy demand. We haven't started displacing fossil fuel. We're just some of the new energy capacity that we're installing is renewable, is carbon neutral or whatever we.

E: Got to get nuclear going, we.

S: Have to do everything we have.

E: I agree. Yes, not in. Any everything.

S: I keep getting to arguments with well meaning skeptics who insist that we could do this all with just solar and batteries.

B: What the hell, man? I mean. You can't bring no.

S: It's like an article in a bridge, I mean.

B: Yeah, yeah.

C: Where do you think it's coming from?

S: I think it's it's, you know, it's generally coming from that political segment that was always anti nuclear. And they're just, this is how they're remaining anti nuclear in the face of reality, in my opinion.

B: Yeah.

S: And The thing is they're, and they when you get into an argument with somebody, a discussion and they don't address your key points, that's a problem. You know, they just reiterate. So like they're, they always say, hey, listen, solar and battery is the cheapest form of new energy that we could add to the grid. And solar plus battery, obviously you know the battery backup helps extend, you know the solar and etcetera, etcetera, say, OK, I acknowledge all of that, but there's multiple problems. The amount of new energy that we have to add to the grid. So the old estimates were we have increased by 100 and you know to 150% by 50% by 2050. I think those estimates are outdated because of crypto and AI. So we're going to have even more increase in energy demand there. There isn't enough copper in the world, you know that we were not producing enough copper in order to build all the batteries we have to build even just for EVs, let alone grid storage, you know, update the grid like solar and, and wind requires and build the solar panels. We do not have the resources to do it and it you know what I mean? It's just silly. And plus, in parts of the world, it just doesn't work. You know, like in the northern half of the United States. There's no way we're going to displace solar energy production seasonally. You know what I mean? I have solar panels on my roof. I'm in Connecticut. I produce almost all my electricity over the late spring, summer, and early fall. I produce almost no energy over the winter. So I would have to store 3 months of energy or more in order to be completely on solar. So then the only other option is you got to get solar from Arizona to me or Florida or whatever. To me it's like, OK, that's fine too. And who's and how? When is the grid going to be upgraded to allow that to happen? The argue they just don't address those issues.

E: Well, nuclear is just bridge to get in.

S: There, it's not. It means whatever we are, we already here at 19, whatever 20% nuclear, you want that to go away. You want to replace all existing fossil fuel, add 50 plus percent and replace 20% nuclear all with wind and solar and not real massive grid storage. And you don't And you think that's the fastest way. That's the fastest way to decarbonize the grid. Forget about it. We got to do everything. We have to do everything. There's just no reason to take it off the table. But they're just so dedicated to like, no, it's got to be all renewable. It's as purest. It's just so it's so frustrating.

C: And again, you often.

S: People you have to doom and gloom. People we got to deal with. It's too late already, the renewable purists.

C: Do do the renewable purists tend to make anti nuclear arguments or do they just not touch nuclear?

S: No, they do. They say it's it's, you know, it takes, it's too expensive, it takes too long.

C: It's not that it's dangerous, that's not their argument.

S: They don't, yeah, they don't really fall on that any.

C: I don't.

S: That's not one of their go TOS because it's not dangerous. Simply it's like it's one of the safest in terms of like the lives lost per unit of energy produced. It's one of the safest and it's not too expensive if you include the entire cost of any of the infrastructure, right? Because if you're yeah, you know, wind and solar are cheap, but not when you consider to get past a certain percentage. And that's what we're talking about. It's cheap at this end of the spectrum. It's cheap when you know, we have 5% penetration of wind of solar, rather like 10 of wind, that's cheap. But when you say if you're going to do 100%, then first of all, wind, way too much land use, just way too much land use. Solar, it's you know, it's only during the day and it's only, you know, year round in sunny parts of the country, which means we need massive grid storage. You know how long it's going to take to build that grid storage, longer than it would take to build nuclear. So the so the duration argument doesn't hold. It literally takes just as long to build pumped hydro as it does to build nuclear. And the newer like the the Natrium nuclear power plants can do grid storage too. They can. They can keep their molten salt and do grid storage.

E: And burn their own waste fuel.

S: Then, well, they have what they have fewer spent nuclear fuel than the older designs, so.

B: And are they, are those the ones that are meltdown? Proof.

S: Yeah, they're pretty much meltdown proof. Yeah, if.

E: You don't put them in an earthquake zone.

C: To get out of the weeds and like, you know, stop looking at the trees and just back off to the forest. Isn't it better to just invest in all roads because they all lead to the same place? Yeah, that's what I never understand about 0. Sum argument.

S: It's like you don't divert money from wind and solar to nuclear. It's like, well, you haven't demonstrated that this is a 0 sum game. We're saying build nuclear instead of coal and yeah, and natural gas.

C: Yeah, we need to stop, you know, expanding those things for sure.

S: And the other advantages, like you can swap a coal plant out one for one with a nuclear plant in the same infrastructure, the same land and the same grid connections, and you just can't do that. You just can't do that. I listen, I love wind and solar. I have solar on my roof. I'm all for it, for what it does, but it has a downside. It too much rare earths and copper and all that stuff, too much grid storage, too much upgrading the grid. All that will take a super long time. And it's too much land use right to do to do 100%. We're just, we're just not, you know, not anytime soon. Again, maybe in 100 years. Fine, I don't care, that's fine. But if if the goal is to get carbon neutral as fast as possible, there's no reason we should take anything off the table and nuclear's advantages are huge. If the if the only disadvantage is money, who cares? Spend the money, it's cheaper than Yep, the climate change, right?

E: Yes. Well, that's the point, yes.

C: But then I, I can kind of see what I mean. I hate to say it what the guy who posted the the piece is saying in the sense of like, I hear that argument and also to some extent it's moot for the next 3 1/2 years because they're not going to spend the money on any of it.

S: Well, there's a much better chance they'll spend money on nuclear than renewables.

C: True. Yeah, Yeah. That's like my hope is, yeah, at least kind of like, I don't know, cater or pander to that.

B: Yeah, it's right.

S: Yeah.

B: Daniel Black Carrot.

S: Right. But we'll see.

B: Just tell him you can burn the Epstein files in the nuclear reactor. Exactly.

S: Let's not go there. All right, let's move on.

From TikTok: More on 3I/ATLAS (13:13)

S: I'm going to start you off with something that Bob and I talked about on TikTok today because it's an update to the evolving 3 I Atlas story a few weeks ago, Bob.

B: Atlas.

S: Yeah, 30 so one of the conspiracy theories on YouTube like 31 Atlas fail. Sorry dude, three I Atlas. Minor point, but you know.

B: Yeah, the I stands for Interstyler.

S: But the sloppy, the sloppiness is, you know, throughout his argument that was just expected. Funny example. Okay so Bob first presented it a few weeks on the show. Third interstellar object confirmed total first one that is a interstellar comet and.

B: Bigger than the other two.

S: Then it's bigger than the other two. What's Yeah, there's three of them. It's the biggest of three. And that was it. And we were, you know, it's, it's heading towards its close approach to the sun, which will be in October and November. It'll come around the other side in early December. And then it will leave the solar system. Yeah, so because that's it's on a hyperbolic orbit, that's how we know it's interstellar, right?

E: Yeah.

S: And then our old friend Avi Loeb chimed in saying this could be an alien artefact just like a MUA MUA and the, you know, the other interstellar objects. And precedent gave a, yeah, a list of completely ridiculous arguments for why that is. So now that has broken out into the mainstream and there's tons of, you know, Internet TikTok conspiracy theorists saying a Harvard physicist is saying we're going to be invaded by aliens.

E: Isn't that great? When isn't that great? When these When? When people like this lend their quote UN quote credibility to the to the crazy people out there, like totally.

B: Yeah, I. Hate. It yeah, so. So, so frustrating. And this despite the fact that in his paper, he actually says at the very end, I guess near the end, he says by far the most likely outcome will be that Three Eye Atlas is a completely natural interstellar object. He even admits that. And these people still of course, didn't didn't read the paper and don't even know that he said that. But that's what he said. And they're still running away with with the worst clickbait titles that I have like ever seen.

S: Oh, here's one. This is from MSN, right? This is mainstream journalism. Here's the headline Hostile alien spacecraft in quotes may strike Earth in November.

C: What, that's like tabloid?

S: That's tabloid level. That's just straight up lying and putting it in quotes makes it seem like somebody said that, Right, Right. The first of all, the the hostile was completely just inserted into the narrative at some point.

B: Yeah, right.

S: ABI Loeb didn't say that. He just said, you know, he said they're they're they're a probe. They're trying to communicate with us. Look, you know, examine us, etcetera. He never introduced this notion of being hostile. Now that's now the narrative that we're going to be invaded by aliens, that there is an alien ship and then all the reporting gets loaded. Now it's like some they're saying it's going it's going to be passing behind the sun. So they report that it'll be hiding behind the sun. That's right. So that it could maneuver in secret. It's not hiding. It's, it's just a, it's.

B: Just where it's coming from. That's where it's going. Somebody said that that it's a tactical maneuver. It's tactical.

S: That's a tactical maneuver if ever I saw. Or it's just a random path of a random chunk of ice rock.

C: People really need something right now to hold on to I guess. No, but why?

S: They're rooting for the Earth to be invaded.

C: Yeah, I don't know. I think they just want like, it's like reality TV, right?

S: Click bait.

C: Yeah, click bait.

E: Total click bait.

C: Well, it's not just that it's yes, it is click bait, but the idea is something to pull your attention away from the. Join a LARP. There you play exactly.

S: Yeah, much more satisfied.

C: About the hobby, yeah.

S: Do something that's pure fantasy and you know it. That's your distraction. Don't read reality your fantasy game.

C: I agree.

S: But that's totally what they do.

E: Yes they do.

S: But yeah, it's just galling that Avi Loeb, he's getting a lot of shade from, you know, anybody with any scientific chops and intellectual integrity, you know, for doing this. But it's like this this. Guy, I think he's too.

E: He's too far. He's too far gone now. He can't retreat.

S: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that that's true. He's acting that way for now, but I haven't talked to the guy. I don't really know if what you know, what his motivation is or why he's so far gone. I mean, you could, you know, I would always argue.

E: I would argue that if he didn't come up with these sorts of ideas, nobody would know the name Avi Loeb at all.

S: That's certainly true. And he wouldn't have his institute being funded by tech Bros. There you go. But right, I just think he he's one of these scientists who may be technically, you know, good in his field, but he does not understand the difference difference between pseudoscience and science. He doesn't understand critical thinking. And so he's falling for really basic critical thinking fails.

E: Yeah, when was the last time he corrected himself?

S: And there's no learning curve, apparently, because he's just making the same mistakes over and over again.

C: Is he a pretty magical thinker in other areas? Not that I know of. Like if he really seems to be his like his Oracle guy.

E: I've not seen him comment on other things.

B: I've read some of his papers that were, you know, I guess in his more in his lane and they were they were interesting. I talked about him. But this stuff is like, I mean, I might not every paper I see from him now, even if even if it's completely unrelated, I'll just be suspected like because I don't trust this guy's thinking.

C: Yeah, that's what I'm always confused when I see. Like I know plenty of academics who are religious, but like secular religious, you know what I mean? But I'm always really amazed when I meet academics, especially in STEM fields or related fields, who believe in magic, but only in this one area. I'm like. How do you? Keep it amazed, you know.

S: See it all the time.

C: Yeah, yeah, you could be, technically.

S: Proficient you can be. You could function as a physician, as a pH. D as a researcher and not understand the philosophical underpinnings of science, not understand the logical nuance of science versus So once you are just technically proficient in your area and that you're a setup for falling for what to us is really obvious pseudoscience.

C: Especially if you're already in sort of community that reinforces that. Like I remember when I was in Graduate School the first time, so I was getting my master's, there was a woman in our lab getting her PhD. She was an older woman, not older, but like older than most of us that were, you know, fresh out of undergrad. And she was a 7th day Adventist. But she was very literal in her beliefs. And she would talk about dinosaurs as though Jesus put them in the ground. And our professor would literally be like I, he would put his fingers in his ears and he'd be like, I cannot hear this or I will not graduate.

E: Wow, like you actually outwardly talk about?

C: Yeah, like we'd go to the bar after like lab and she would just like talk about her beliefs. And he would be like, I'm your science professor, like, you're getting a a neuroscience PhD in my lab. You can't talk like, yeah.

E: That's interesting. That's interesting. They don't have. They're not able to control themselves I guess is the way.

S: To well, they just, they think this is the way reality works, you know, So why should they hold back? But yeah, we've talked about this before. Like should, like, should that be a problem? Should you have a issue graduating a science PhD? Because they believe magic. And I think the best approach is what you believe in your heart of hearts is your business, right? But you have to demonstrate knowledge. You have to demonstrate you understand evolutionary theory. But The thing is, I would say you have to demonstrate that you understand the philosophy and logic of science. And it's kind of hard to demonstrate that and profess belief in pseudoscience.

C: Yeah. And profess things that go against it.

S: Yeah.

C: Yeah. That's like, OK, well, which one is it then? Are you just saying what you need to say to graduate? What do you actually think?

S: Right.

C: Because that's what scholarship is.

B: Yeah.

C: I I can't think of a single field where when you write your dissertation, you're not expected to have your own thoughts and ideas. Like that's the whole point. A dissertation is, is a creative work. It can't just be look, this is what other people said, right? That's not a dissertation.

E: You don't go up the rails and talk about creationism and things.

C: That's what I'm saying like.

E: Obviously not going to be part of whatever it is the dissertation.

C: Has, I would hope not God. I mean, unless you're a theology. Well, OK, yeah. But even then, they're not usually right.

S: Yeah, but this I would still say we can't police the faith. Of no students not. It has, they have to understand the difference between faith and empirical claims, right? If they get those things confused, that's a problem. So you're basically forcing them to, you know, essentially wall off their faith from science and not just like, yes, this is what the scientists say, even though I don't believe it. They've got A at the graduate level, like the doing research level, as you say, they have to be able to think, live and breathe science to its core or they're not going to be a competent scientist.

C: No. And it's one thing if we're talking about an undergrad trying to get a degree. It's another thing when you're going for a pH. D It's not like, look, I took these classes and I earned my pH. D It's, look, I did this creative research project and I proved that I am of sufficient knowledge and, and theoretical and applied knowledge to be able to defend these views to the very person, my major professor who holds the ability to pass me in their hands. Don't talk about that stuff to them. It's not a good idea. Yeah.

E: It's bad, yeah. It's a it's a bad strategy.

S: Bad judgment.

News Items

Artery Calcium Scan (23:11)

• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/health/coronary-artery-calcium-heart.html 

S: Yeah. All right, Cara, tell us about this artery calcium scan.

C: Yeah, so I came across an article in the New York Times. They have AI guess a vertical called new old age. It's it was written by Paula Spann on July 26th and updated on July 29th. The headline is this test tells you more about your heart attack risk and the very the the subhead is the coronary artery calcium scan can offer blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, ah, I just did one of those like 2 weeks ago. So I got excited because I wanted to read more about it. When my primary care physician recommended that I get a coronary artery calcium scan. I had never heard of it before and in this article the journalist mentions that most people haven't heard of these scans. Have you guys heard of a coronary artery calcium or coronary calcium CT? Sometimes it's called that.

E: Never once, but I'm not surprised I haven't heard of.

C: It right and Bob, you haven't either.

B: No.

C: So here's, here's what it is, and this is so, I mean, interesting. And throughout the article, the, the journalist, you know, talks to different cardiologists, different individuals in the medical profession and kind of across the board, they're singing its praises and saying, like, I, I often recommend this to my patients. What it does, It's ACT scan that images the vessels around your heart. When I went into my doctor's appointment, I, I had my kind of regular physical. She was like, we're going to get your blood work. We're going to look at everything and, and see where we're at. And she's like, OK, as has been the case for the past few years, my cholesterol, my total is a little bit high. This is something that is in my family. So, you know, maybe I have genetically high cholesterol. Maybe it's due to some lifestyle factors. A lot of my family struggles with obesity. I don't. And I'm quite active and I eat pretty well. So she's like, you know, when we take your cholesterol in your blood, all we're looking at is circulating cholesterol. We're seeing how much cholesterol is like in your actual blood sample. And that's all that it can really tell us when we. And then I was like, well, I've had like an echocardiogram, right? So that's where they image your heart. It's not just like an EKG. It's like I've had a full echocardiogram before. And she was like, yeah, they're looking at your muscle and they're looking at your your valves and everything like that. But they don't look at the arteries of your heart when you do an echocardiogram. What this coronary calcium CT does is it looks for small calcifications that could be the beginnings of that plaque buildup in your arteries. And so this is a test that is relatively cheap. It's very easy, it's non invasive. But here's the kicker, and it's probably the reason that most people don't know about it and haven't gotten it. It's not covered by your insurance. You may be lucky enough that your insurance does cover it, but I I have very very good insurance through the hospital where I work and I it wasn't covered by my insurance either. Luckily my my primary care found me a lab that will do it for $100 flat so you can get it done relatively cheap. I mean I know for some people that's quite a lot of money. For other people, that's what their co-pay would be anyway. But what it does is it images your heart and the those that interpret the test, they look for these small kind of calcifications and they use an algorithm based on a bunch of different risk factors and based on what they see, they give you a percentage like the the score that you get on the test is a percentage. I was very lucky. My calcium CT score was 0. When you have a score of 0, that means there's no calcification in your vessels at all. That means that you are at what they're calling 0% risk of a major cardiac event within the next 10 years. Anything between I want to see where the cut offs are. Anything between 10 or sorry 0 and 5% they consider UN like unnecessary to treat. So you, you don't need statins, you don't need any any other intervention. 5 to 20% is the Gray zone for a lot of cardiologists. And then over 20%, for example, Doctor Philip Greenland here, preventive cardiologist at Northwestern, he said over 20% quote, there's no doubt the risk is sufficiently high to justify medication. OK. And sorry, I may have been a little bit unclear because zero percent is the same thing as a score of 0, right? And that means no calcification and 0% risk of of a major cardiac event within the next 10 years. Based on that algorithm I mentioned, they take the score from the coronary CT scan and a lot of other things like your age, whether or not you smoke, your activity level, your diet, and they'll calculate a risk percentage. So 5% or lower risk, you don't need drugs. 20% or higher, you probably do need drugs, but looking at the actual score itself with no other sort of ancillary information, different cardiologists will recommend different things. So any score over 0, some cardiologists might offer statins, a score over 100, they'll suggest higher intensity statins. And if your score is 300 or higher, you've you've got about the same risk as somebody who's already had a heart attack. So your intervention is probably going to be similar to that of somebody who's had a heart attack. So this gives you what you know, cardiologists argue is a better understanding of the actual disease process taking place. It's not just a proxy for that disease process, which is what you're kind of circulating cholesterol is. Yes, that's a cheap and easy test and it's really important to do as part of your physical, but it's definitely not the whole story. Couple caveats here. The main 1 is that there's been no randomized controlled trial linking the calcium cardiac score specifically with disease outcomes, but there have been studies that show obviously statin use and its capability to prevent heart attack or stroke. And then there is a new study, I think that came out of Australia where they looked at asymptomatic patients with family histories and they found that after three years, those had undergone the scans had a sustained reduction in cholesterol and lower risk of heart disease than those who had not been tested. So that same doctor, Greenland said the test leads to more statin prescriptions, better adherence to statins, less progression, progression of atherosclerosis and less plaque growth. It kind of tips the scale. Who is this test for? It's for asymptomatic individuals between the ages of 40 and 75. It gets a little bit less clear cut over 75 because over 75, most people are going to have arterial plaque anyway. And so the scan may not tell you much. And also, I guess those who already have heart disease or other histories of coronary problems, probably they have other interventions and other screening tools that are that are less broad, I guess you could say. So those who don't have a history between 40 and 75 are those who most cardiologists say would really benefit from this test. And I was so glad that my primary recommended it because I was like, I've never heard of that. And now I know my score is 0 and it makes me feel better and less stressed about basically, I'm not going to go on statins if I don't need to. And I may have been one of those people who started statins early without necessity. And, you know, drugs come with some side effects. They're, they're relatively low with statins. They're, they're pretty safe drugs by and large. But usually when you start a statin, you don't come off of it. So, you know, they said, we'll repeat the study in five years and we'll see if anything has changed. But for the time being, it was, I don't know, it was kind of validating for me to have that test and to know that at least my arteries look healthy, even if sometimes the numbers in a blood test aren't exactly where you want them to be.

S: Yeah. Couple little things. So yeah, the score considers the area and density of the calcium. Yeah, they also can express it as a percentile.

C: Yeah, there's a percentile that has other, I guess, variables put into it, Yeah.

S: But the calcium score is like zero to 100 is low risk, 100 to 300 is moderate risk, over 300 is high risk and it could the score could get over get over 400 if it's super high. In terms of statins, I just wrote about statins on science based medicine today. There was a recent review article that reviewed all the evidence for cholesterol, LDLHDL and statins and other interventions and they concluded that yet the best evidence supports the use of statins versus any other intervention. You should always do the lifestyle stuff right but. Obviously, most people. Don't adequately do that, but in any, and even if you are doing all of the lifestyle stuff you should be doing, statins still help. It's not like you don't have to do that if you do the lifestyle things. And they said that the evidence for high doses is better and that they recommend starting at the high dose because people will generally stay at whatever dose they start on. Just from a public health, you know, perspective, you're better off just starting at the most effective treatment that has the best evidence for reducing LDL and reducing cardiac events and more immortality. So they are. They are extremely effective.

C: And that's good to know because like, you know, they, they kind of talked about different patients in this article, like one guy who went in and his, his, you know, it sounds like his cholesterol was kind of like mine. It was like a little too high, but not high enough. And, and they were like, I'm not sure. And then he did the scan and his score was like 175. And they were like, Jeez, we need to get you on statins right away. And he was like, thank goodness. Like this could have saved my life. But then they talked about another person who, you know, she ran every day and she ate a really good diet and, and like, there wasn't really a lot of room for her on the lifestyle stuff. And that can be frustrating when all you hear every time you go in is, well, just kind of reduce your fat intake and make sure you're active. And you're like, well, I'm already doing all of that, so what's next?

S: That means it's familial.

C: Yeah, and that's what I think is going on with me because every single person in my family has.

S: Yeah, and which means you need statins.

C: Yes, which means I will need statins will need, but not at 41, thank goodness. Five years. We'll we'll find out.

S: Reassess. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Cara. Bob, talk about everything, right? Not taking anything off the table.

Microwave Beam for Geothermal Drilling (33:42)

• Superhot geothermal energy could unearth power needed for AI era 

S: Tell us about perhaps possibly a new technique for geothermal drilling.

B: Yes, I agree. Perhaps possibly it got, I mean lots of it is caveats here for sure, but this is really interesting. So extracting geothermal energy from the Earth, I don't know where else you would extract it from. Maybe on the verge of a renaissance. Researchers have demonstrated that a device called a gyrotron, basically a high-powered microwave cannon, it can efficiently vaporize rock, potentially replacing, you know, mechanical drill bits and enabling geothermal energy almost anywhere on the planet. This is fascinating and I'm a little excited about it. I hope it pans out. But you know, there's so many things can go wrong here. But let's let's let's go over what's happening here. Geothermal energy, it's a renewable energy resource. I don't think we've mentioned it much on the show, right? Not, not too much. We're just focusing on so many nuclear and and solar and wind primarily. But this energy takes advantage of two types of heat under the under the ground. One is simply the leftover heat from the Earth's formation, right. The other is the heat caused by radioactive decay. Now, geothermal energy currently provides less than 1% of global energy, so not a lot going on there right now. But the amount of geothermal energy available in the Earth is vast. It's really dramatically gargantuan. The Earth's total heat content is estimated that are whopping 10 to the 24 megajoules. It's an octillion joules. Trust me, that's a lot of joules. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know that. So. So we'll never tap into all that because that's all of it. That's never going to happen. But the usable potential thermal energy is estimated at 10 to the 18 megajoules. The caveat there is that it implies using modern, modern technology. Some estimates say that the humanity could survive on just that for like 5000 years, which would be pretty awesome, right? That's with nothing else, no other energy sources but geothermal. We could just tap into that. You know what's extractable? 5000 years. Now, a modern geothermal plants drill down to where the hot rocks are, right? Like the hundreds of degrees. And they send water down there to turn it into supercritical steam that comes up and turns a turbine. And then from there, of course, you get electricity, just the classic and electricity production, right? So why don't we just have these everywhere? And the answer to that is primarily because it's just too damn expensive, right? And the good heat is generally too deep. We just really can't get deep enough. The modern geothermal plants that exist now, but they're in special places near volcanoes. They're near Hot Springs or tectonic plate boundaries. And these areas only need, you know, very shallow drilling, like something like 400 feet.

C: Yeah, I'm pretty sure like all of Iceland uses geothermal like the whole country, yeah.

B: Yep, Iceland, but also California, Philippines and and Kenya.

C: But I mean, I think Iceland is 100% geothermal.

S: Iceland is 100% renewable, but that is 65% geothermal. So they're mostly geothermal, but not quite 100%.

B: So yeah, that's that's damn impressive. But they're just in a lucky spot. They don't have to go very deep. 400 feet is nothing is nothing. You, what you would need to do is go down elsewhere, kilometers, many kilometers. Now, if we could just dig deep enough easily, right? If we could just dig, go anywhere and just dig deep enough and we could extract energy anywhere that we wanted. And that would be, I, I think that would be potentially a game changer since geothermal is, is reliable, it's predictable 24/7 doesn't matter what the weather doesn't matter, the wind doesn't matter, battery technology, it's all irrelevant. It's just always going to be there. So it would be for a baseline right state for a baseline, it would just be, it would just be beautiful, big, big, beautiful geothermal energy. So this would also, of course, change the total amount of extractable geothermal energy. If we could just go anywhere, then that number that I gave 10 to the 18 megajoules would go way up. It would go up from like the quintillion megajoules, which is 10 to the 18 or perhaps you can go as high as a six Tilian megajoules. That's just back of the envelope right there. But I mean, it seems reasonable that that it could be a few orders of magnitude greater.

S: Well, the deeper you can go, the more area is accessible to geothermal.

B: Yeah, so but if you could using this being able to go down anywhere, that would be enough for our society. If you just, you know, extrapolate, that would be like a 500,000 years of of all the energy that we need at our current levels of course.

E: Crypto couple 1000 years from.

B: Now, Yeah, right. Yeah, you include crypto and AI that would go down to like, you know, 250,000. OK, So this technology, the technology that makes this potentially happen is just one word, Gyrotron, which I had heard of in the past, but it really it's like. A transformer or something? Right, right. It really didn't get a full sense of what what a gyrotron really is. Now this, this, these exist. A gyrotron's exist. It's it's a specialized type of vacuum electron tube that generates really high-powered electromagnetic waves. Now these devices exist. They, they're used routinely today when a Takamak fusion reactor is heating plasma 100,000,000°C, they're using, they're using a gyrotron to heat that. And in other industries, like some specialized industries, they use them today for precisely melting and vaporizing material. So this is, this exists, but now it's never been used to vaporize rock, right? And now that this is what they're using it for now, this device starts with an electron gun. It's, it's kind of complicated, but it's actually not too hard to explain. So it starts with an electron gun. So the electrons that the gun produces, right, encounters a very powerful magnetic field, which causes the the electrons to move in circles as they move forward. OK, so imagine the Earth. I've tried to think of how would you picture this in your mind? Imagine it's like the Earth's moving around the sun as the sun moves through space, right? So it's kind of orbiting, but it's also in a, in a spiral. Can you picture that? That's a spiral or helical. It's a helical path. And since accelerating charges emit radiation, the gyrotron emits very powerful radiation. In this case, the radiation is in the millimeter wave range, essentially high-powered rock melting microwave beam is what's coming out of this bad boy. And, and it's far more powerful than a mazer, which is essentially a laser that uses microwaves, right? So even more powerful, which is, which really took me by surprise. So of course there are differences between a mazer and and this the gyrotron. So using a gyrotron to drill holes, it's now no longer in the lab and that's why it's in the news. The company Quays Energy tested their new 100 kilowatt gyrotron in the field in Texas. They successfully dug 100m hole in the test site and they have a. A second, apparently they have got a second hundred kilowatt gyratron. They got two of them and then so they're doing another test and I think that's ongoing right now and that's also going very well. So the next big step for them would be testing a gyrotron that's 10 times more powerful. So this would be in the MW range because this the old one, the second one was in the kilowatt, 100 kilowatts. So this is the in the MW range and it would probably end up being maybe 3 or 4 kilowatts. I mean megawatts because there's all this support equipment and stuff. And this this thing wouldn't be just shooting a beam into the Earth like the like the Enterprise. And remember that episode? They just drilled the hole with their phaser into the planet to release some. I do remember this original series, right? Yeah, no, I'm talking about the one from from next Gen. Where they? Where they where? Oh, was that a next? Gen. Yeah, yeah. Why?

E: Do I remember original series? Oh well, in any case.

B: I think they they might have done it in classic, but they didn't actually show the hole like they did in in next generation. OK, so they've got a lot of support equipment and also they wouldn't be just shooting the beam from the surface. All you know, all the way down as deep as they they want to go, there's equipment going down and the the wave guides have to go actually in the ground as well. So it's never, it's never really far away from the the melted rock because it because then it's got to also clean it up and get it and.

E: Get Yeah, what happens to the material.

B: Yeah, the stuff that doesn't just vaporize out of there, there's a there's a device that's going down there with it and it just kind of sweeps a. Vacuum. Or something. Yeah, it kind of sucks it up, and it's because it's got to pull it all out of there, right? So now this MW Gyratron that would be the next stage should be able to bore holes that are 8 inches across would be basically, it seems as as powerful as a commercial scale system would be, so that you wouldn't really need to go too much higher than than multiple megawatts. Like like you know this, you don't need to go to gigawatts in this scenario. You could, you could dig the holes that they need to dig for just if it's if it's a MW scale. Matthew Hood, who was the Co founder and chief of staff at Quays, says if we can scale those depths to 10 to 20 kilometers, then we can enable super hot geothermal to be worldwide accessible. So 9:50 to 20 kilometers, yeah, that's deep as hell.

S: Yeah, but when I hear those words, if we can scale.

B: Yep, that's always of course at that.

S: Point yeah, that's those are those are big words. You know, that's, that's the the whole deal right there. If we can scale, that's when that is. Technologies live or die often.

B: Yeah. And it, it seems to me that this is, this is all about getting deep, if you can get if you can get deep with with this technology. And it seems like they can't they.

S: And Bob, let me let me add to that. It's about getting deep and hot regardless of depth. I think. So for my reading this text is costs more than conventional drilling. It's more expensive, but they are hoping that when they scale it right, they'll be able to get to deeper depth faster but and hotter. And they could do what's called super geothermal or super hot geothermal with super critical yeah, which can extract 5 to 10 times more power per well and that will offset the higher cost of the drilling. So if you don't get to hotter rock, it's not cost.

B: Effective right, exactly you got to get that deep enough where the the water creates a super critical steam, which is which is the which is the sweet spot right there and they they think, you know, conventional drilling, you know, you imagine that drill that's going down that drill, you know has got to has got to come all the way back up. It's got to be changed it's got to be fixed whatever. There's lots of things like non they call it like non production episodes where where nothing's really you know, you, you're not digging because you're you're you're doing stuff that a physical drill is, is required that that wouldn't be required for using this gyrotron. So yeah, they, they would like to to do. I think they were talking about a few meters an hour continuously. And yeah, yeah, we we don't know if they're going to be able to put to pull this off, but if they can, if they can do it fast because you can't wait years. Like the deepest holes that we've ever dug, Steve, were drills. It took 10 like 10-15 years or more. That that's not what we're talking about. If they can't do it much, much faster, then this is just going to be ridiculous. So the company does mention they didn't mention one hurdle that I came across that they they say they need to overcome. And that's like that is drilling non vertical holes because some sites, depending on I think depending on the geology, you may, you may need to drill holes at an angle. This is designed to go basically just a vertical all the way down. So that so that could potentially be one of the hurdles. But of course, other experts have talked about some other hurdles some. And of course, some of these other skeptics are more skeptical in general. And you know, they're skeptical essentially that Quays is going to essentially reinvent drilling. And it's a huge ask. I mean, this is a huge endeavour. Of course the rewards would be would be tremendous. But, yeah, this is changing an industry like this, of course, you've got to be skeptical about it. Let's see. Roland Horn, he's a lead lead of the geothermal program at Stanford University. He said burning holes in rocks is impressive. However, that's not the whole of what's involved in drilling. So sure, Yeah, it's a lot more complicated than just phasering your way into a deep hole in the ground. So in other words, melting rock is just one of the challenges, right? The system still needs to be able to withstand the immense heat and pressure at those depths because it just keeps getting hotter and hotter the deeper you go. I can't even imagine, you know, what it would be be like when you're, if you're if you're 10 kilometers down, 1520 kilometers down, how hot it's going to get in. And the rock is kind of like it's kind of like a gooey mess down there. It's really not even rock. I think when you when you go that deep. So I'm not sure how that would work, but I'm sure they've thought about that. So that so we would have to wait and see how the how the rest of this testing with this, this new stage of the, the Jairotry goes. So we'll see how that goes. And but I know what else you're thinking. I know what you're thinking, geothermal energy is cool and all, but what kind of sci-fi weapon would a gyrotron make? That is not what I was thinking, Bob. That's all right. I'm disappointed, Cara, I'm but, but that's what I was thinking. So of course I did some research and what kind of weapon would this damn thing make? Now remember this, this energy beam, this beam, this microwave beam is, is very energy dense, 10/10 megawatts per per cube for per square meter. It can boil metals or punch a hole through tough rock continuously. This is meant this isn't like those pulse lasers. This is this is meant to deliver that continuously for, you know, potentially hours at a time. So this is just an amazing amount of energy transfer here. If you used if this was a weapon on a planet's surface with an atmosphere, it would it could be effective, but it would have some drawbacks. If you guys have ever used a microwave in a kitchen, right, you know how water absorbs microwaves. So it would not work that great in our atmosphere. For example, there's some alien world that's got humidity because the water's it's going to absorb it. So that's going to retenuate the beam. So that wouldn't be good. It's and it's also it's not a laser beam, so you can't do a tight focus with the gyrotron microwave beam that you could do with a laser beam. So it's doesn't have that. But actually we do have this technology, very similar technology for crowd control. You guys have probably seen that the past 10 years. It's a device. It's a it's a truck mounted device that emits it. It's a similar type of technology. I don't I don't necessarily think that it's got an actual gyrotron in there, but emits microwave beams that essentially makes you very hot and very uncomfortable. So if you want to disperse a crowd, they've they've used it. This is a this is a device that's been available for for many years now and it's very effective. If you're, if you got if you got, let's say rioters or something and you want to disperse a crowd. This thing will make them running because all of a sudden it it doesn't really damage your skin, but it makes you feel like your skin is on fire. You will just like run away from wherever you are if you get hit with this thing. So this thing actually exists as a as a type of weapon. It could also be used for anti drone or electronics warfare. But this, the gyrotron would really shine though in space, A gyrotron would, would kick some serious butt because of course there's no, there's no, there's nothing in space to absorb the, the microwave beam. There's no, there's no water to absorb it or anything like that. So it would be much more effective. And then with it, with its megawatts of continuous output, it could last a lot longer. Most lasers would would just overheat before the jarotron would even really get going. Now to be fair though, a lot of lasers aren't really meant to be, you know, to operate continuously for for hours at a time. So it's not necessarily a very fair comparison. Let's see against other ships, a gyrotron would would be very, very effective. It would damage optics, it would disable electronics. It could even deal, it could even deal with the common countermeasures that lasers have to contend with. They they, they put out like a, like a fog of material that would, that would scatter the beam. You know, the micro, these microwave beams would kind of go through a lot of those countermeasures apparently. So bottom line, if you're writing some sci-fi for space battles, you might want to include a fusion reactor powering a petawatt class Gyrotron, and that would be really cool science fiction.

S: All right. Thanks, Bob. So my news item is also about alternative energy, this one about wind power.

World’s Largest Cargo Plane (49:21)

• The upstart company that wants to build the world's largest aircraft 

S: This isn't by design. This just caught my eye and it happens to be have an angle for wind power. So a company is planning on building the largest cargo plane ever built in order to increase wind power. So how does that? How do those two things relate to each other?

B: No clue how would. AI read it, so I know.

S: Yes, Tara, you had. Did you read it?

C: I did not, I do not know, OK, the largest cargo plane ever for wind power. Are they going to like capture wind off the plane?

S: No. Okay, it's very indirect, but it shows you how things relate. So let's back up a little bit. So right now the wind industry is building bigger and bigger wind turbines with bigger and bigger blades. And the reason they do this is because they are more efficient at bigger size, right? You get more bang for the buck. You get more energy for the inputs. The biggest It's not coming. The biggest wind turbines are offshore. We're building these like mega wind turbines offshore with blades that are 100 meters.

B: Ever see a? Ever see a blade up close?

S: They're. Mess.

B: It's like something that is size science fiction. You're like, that can't be that big. It's it. They're ridonkulous.

S: Now the biggest ones on land are not as big, they only get up to about 70 meters. Why do you think that is?

B: Roads.

S: It's the delivery. We can deliver these 100 meter blades on a ship to an offshore wind turbine, but we don't really have a convenient way and a cost effective way to deliver something that big over land.

C: Enter the cargo plant.

S: Enter the cargo plant exactly so the this is exactly why How?

B: Big is that mother?

S: The idea even came into being. So this is the idea of aerospace engineer Mark Lundstrom. He founded a company called Radia in 2016 specifically to build what he what he's calling the wind runner. That's the name of the aircraft. If built, if it ever gets built, it would be the largest aircraft in the world and it's Goose. It's specifically in what way? The heaviest? I just think the physics volume wise the biggest and has the biggest cargo area important must be important the.

E: Largest before this?

S: The what?

E: Spruce Goose, You know the Howard.

S: Johnson I I think the circulator, yeah.

E: Yeah, it would, it would have to be, wouldn't it right. But I but I think to date that is. Still no. Largest cargo plane? No. No. No, Something else, Maybe Russians. Built the Russians.

S: Built one, yeah.

E: And Anatov? Yeah, one of their. Anatov Yeah.

S: And it actually was destroyed. It was in Ukraine and it was destroyed in the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

B: Yeah, the yeah, the Anatov. Yeah, and 225 Miria.

S: So yeah, there are some big, big boys out there, but nothing this big, nothing as big as the Wind runner is planned on being. It's eventually being designed so that it's big enough to carry 100 meter wind turbine blade.

E: There you go.

S: Or it could carry 290m ones or 380m ones. You know, it can carry the big ones, but it can it can carry 100 meter blade. So this would enable it to transport the blade anywhere where you could land a plane, right? So it's designed to be able to land on standard runways, but also to be able to land on a makeshift runway, right? So one that you just set up near a field where you want to build a bunch of mega wind turbines.

B: OK, I think I would. Think that'd be that'd be pretty damn important, because even if you could land it at an airport, you still got to get it on site. Which, yeah, doesn't. Use 1/2 hour away, an hour away.

S: No, they definitely specifically to the site want to be able to land it on a rough airstrip that was, you know, built just because it's in the airfield, the field where the turbines are, they actually considered whether or not they should use. Vertical take up and dirigibles no.

B: Oh.

C: What is that word?

B: Interesting.

S: Dirigibles.

C: I don't know that word.

S: Durable, say.

B: Lighter than lighter than air. Lighter.

S: Yeah. What else? What are the other words for it?

B: Ultra light, not ultra.

S: Ultra light What though? A. Blimp. Blimps.

B: Are. Different.

S: Zeppelin, Zeppelin. Zeppelin. I think blimp, zeppelins and dirigibles are all a little different, so.

J: OK, but it's in that it's in that general airship. An airship. Airship. Yes, OK.

S: They specifically were gonna, they looked into building an airship, which would be better in some ways, but it would not. There's no infrastructure. We don't have an infrastructure for landing airships, you know, where we would need to land them. And they wanted to be able to land them at standard air airports. So they decided to go with an airplane, you know, a jet. And so they're designing the wind runner. So if this comes to being, this would make inland mega wind turbines economically and logistically plausible. And Lundstrom says he hopes once, you know, he builds these wind runners to build a million of these super wind turbines around the world, not just in the US, in the world which which, you know, that's the kind of order of magnitude that we need, you know, to to really take a bite out of fossil fuel. So which is the goal here. Because again, as I said earlier in the show, the big limitation of wind turbines is the land use. There's only so many places we can put them where they, you know, you have good wind, it's near infrastructure, it's not in the middle of a Raptors breeding zone, whatever. You have to put it someplace where it's not going to have too much of an impact on the environment, etcetera, etcetera.

B: Velociraptors are extinct, what are you talking?

S: About the other dinosaur Raptors. So yeah, so I wish them well. I hope this all works out. It'd be nice to see and also just amazing to see one of these things that, you know, gonna be so massive. Yeah, but who knows who at this point. It's just the plan of a company, you know, to to build these things. It doesn't exist yet, but it's not implausible. Again, it's not really. It's only a little bit bigger than planes, jets that are functioning and in existence, so it's not like it's pushing the limits that much. It's just design pictures specifically to take these giant blades.

E: The pictures I'm seeing of these things are just computer generated. Pictures like. Concepts.

S: Yep, doesn't exist yet, Yeah.

B: I wonder how they designed it specifically to be able to land in a field. Is it just like the landing gear and shocks? I guess so, yeah, I. Guess right?

S: Yeah.

Dental Floss Vaccine (56:17)

• Dental Floss Could Be the Future of Vaccines – DNyuz 

S: All right, Evan, tell us about this new dental floss vaccine idea. What is this?

E: Isn't that interesting? I hadn't heard of this one before. I wish Jay were here for this news item. Right. It has to do with dentistry and he, I think he has a fascination with the teeth and.

B: More of a fetish.

E: And OK, I guess we could call it the losing your teeth that is generally considered good for your health for several reasons. Among them, it helps prevent gum disease by removing plaque and food particles between teeth and along the gum line, reducing the risk of gingivitis and periodontitis. It reduces tooth decay, cleaning areas your toothbrush can't reach. It improves your breath. We're all grateful for that. Reduces halitosis. Halitosis, bad breath, enhances overall oral hygiene, contributing to a cleaner mouth, helping to maintain healthy teeth and gums, supporting long term oral health and can reduce the risk of disease. Because there are studies that suggest a link between gum disease and heart disease, diabetes and other conditions. So these are good flossing habits that can really help improve.

S: But Evan, can I say, can I say if you dig into the medical literature, there really is a good evidence for any of those claims of any of those health benefits above and beyond good brushing. If you do a good solid, thorough brushing of your teeth, there really isn't evidence that flossing on top of that has like clinically significant benefits. This doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or that it shouldn't be part of your routine. I'm just just we have to be pedantic and just say that it's there isn't like this home run clinical evidence that that all of those claims are true for flossing above and beyond thorough brushing.

E: Are there any dentists out there who do not recommend flossing?

S: I don't think they go that far to not recommend flossing, but it's like thorough brushing is really effective. That's the point here. But. But still, again, a lot of people don't necessarily do thorough enough flossing. I mean thorough. How do you get in between your? Teeth flossing on top of that can help close the gap, right?

C: But like, you can't like toothbrushes don't go in between your teeth.

S: Yeah, I mean they they do a little bit. I mean, you know, when well.

C: Yeah, I mean up under the gum line, yeah, but not like deep in between.

E: Right. Certainly. I think our experience has been we've brushed our teeth and then flossed and seen the things that come out on.

C: Exactly on the.

E: Actual thread, yeah. But I, I understand what you're saying, Steve, and maybe I, I don't know. Do you think the reason for that, I'm sorry to get off a little off topic here is because you would have to test it by having people not brush their teeth and only floss and see what happens in those.

S: Cases, I think there's just not that much room for improvement. And so that means that you would have to do a really big study to have the the statistical power to detect that small effect. We've run into this in medicine all the time, time where the benefits, there's just not that much headroom for benefit. In fact, this just came up when I was writing about statins because the question is do does supplementing HDL, you know, the good cholesterol, does that reduce heart attacks? And the evidence there is also very weak, except for this one particular type of HDL, which has some recent positive evidence. But the but the researchers were saying this is probably because of all because, you know, people who need to reduce their cholesterol are on statins and other treatments. And so there's just no room left for improvement, right? Because we don't do it. Like as you say, we can't do it instead of effective therapy. So if one effective therapy can obscure the benefits of other interventions because you're just not left with that much room for improvement. So I think that's what we're talking. Again, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to floss. I'm not saying don't floss. I'm just saying. Because you said it has all these health benefits, just because we've said it before on the show, they're actually not that proven. Because again, if you take good care of your teeth otherwise you've already gotten 90% of the benefit or whatever and it's just really hard to detect what's left. Does that make sense?

B: Didn't we interview a dentist and he said that there just hasn't been enough good quality? Yeah.

S: You would need, as I said, you would need really big solid studies to detect the small clinical benefit that's remaining to a statistically significant, you know, point.

E: It's interesting that they don't have it. Would have not, wouldn't have thought that, but OK, All right, well, all that considered and good food, good food for thought there. What if, what if you could floss and deliver a vaccine to yourself at all at the same time? I would consider that an added potential, I'll call it potential benefit on top of the under potential benefits that flossing is said to is said to have. And I read this first, this headline over at science.org in which they write dental floss could be the future of vaccines. Engineers transform dental floss into needle free vaccines medical but primarily for people who are are reluctant to get shots basically fear of.

C: The don't we already have nasal spray vaccines?

E: They do, they do, and they compare this as far as its effectiveness from what they've tested from this particular study as comparable with nasal vaccines. But I don't know enough about nasal vaccines to know if not. My understanding is though that not all vaccines can be delivered.

S: No, that's usually just like the live virus ones.

C: Oh, right, yeah, there's like certain flu ones that you can use. Right.

E: And this is what they tested. They did use influenza in this, in this particular test. Medical researchers worldwide are simultaneously discovering that one of the most effective ways to reach the body is through the gum line. There's a new study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering where researchers revealed they could trigger immune responses in mice by coding floss with proteins and and an inactive flu virus, then jamming it between their tiny teeth. Flossing a little mice to make to make this test.

C: How did? They make floss that small.

E: Yeah, the.

C: Little mice teeth are so tiny.

E: So how does one floss a mouse that that was one of the major basically questions about this like, OK, we have this idea, how are we going to do this? I think they researched it and had never been done. I couldn't find any research about it so they had to come up with the technique themselves. So they say it's a two person job. One scientist gently pulls the mouse's jaw down. I imagine the the the mouse is knocked out for this I would hope and you pull the mouse's jaw down with a metal ring from a key chain while the other scientist administers the floss. So it's definitely a two person job. Here is what they did. The title of the study is called Floss based vaccination Targets the gingival sulcus for mucosal and systemic immunization in mice. I'll read from the abstract. In mice, floss based immunization induced strong and substained immune activation across multiple organs, robust systemic and mucosal antibody responses, and durable protection against lethal influenza infection independent of age, food and liquid consumption. Floss based vaccination was superior to sublingual and comparable with intranasal vaccination. There was also a test, not of the not of the flu, but of a fluorescent dye in humans, in which human participants took this fluorescent dye delivered via floss pics that effectively reached gingival sulcus, supporting clinical feasibility. These findings establish floss based vaccination as a simple needle free, needle free strategy that enhances vaccine delivery and immune activation compared with existing mucosal immunization methods. There's an immunologist from Yale University, Steve, maybe you knew him. You know everyone at Yale, Akiko Awasaki, who is quoted as saying, I had honestly never thought of using floss as a vaccination strategy. The results are quite impressive. Vanderbilt University immunologist James Crowe said it's tough to develop an effective vaccine that can be administered through those entry points because they have naturally tough defenses against foreign molecules. Your mouth basically what help helps protect you, but these scientists were able to do it. During a test run. The team found that when researchers coated floss with fluorescently labeled protein, 75% of the protein was successfully delivered to the mouse's gums. Back to the mouse. And even two months after flossing, the mice had elevated levels of antibodies in their lungs, noses, feces and spleens, suggesting a robust immune response to the protein. And you know, why not If it if it works and I don't, I don't know how many people do not get vaccinated simply because of their fear of a shot. Steve, maybe you have some insight.

S: I don't have to mean it's not insignificant. I don't have a number off the top of my.

E: Head okay, but right, so not insignificant. So and and then if you can go this route.

S: That's we still need to prove clinical efficacy. This is just proof of concept. Yeah, the proteins get in the body, but does it?

C: Actually work I guess. And my fear is like, and I don't know, maybe you guys can speak to this, but like when you get a shot, it's measured and all of it goes into you, yes. Like when you are flossing your teeth, how much of the drug are you actually getting?

B: My thoughts exactly on that.

C: Yeah. I don't want to get a subclinical dose and I also don't want to have to take so much that I'm guaranteed to get enough in me because what if there is a dose response, you know, issue here?

E: That would be, is that just an engineering tweak or it just, or is it just come down to the user following the directions correctly in order to get enough of the medicine, you know the of the vaccination into?

C: That, well, I, I just foresee different people getting different uptakes, but there's no way that that could be controlled, I don't think.

S: It's probably a better than nothing strategy, yes, but not a preferred first line strategy.

C: Yeah.

S: It's also always better for any public health measure, the one and done always better. Then you have to do this, you know, for a number of times over time or whatever. So, but you know, it's more tools in our toolbox the better. Again, it's there's a lot of people out there. Not everything works for everybody, so.

C: I see this actually being like less for vaccines and more for like just drugs.

E: Well, sure. Right, Carrie, that's a good point. What else can can you deliver into the body through the deadline at this point? I imagine they'll do some more research in those other areas as well.

S: All right. Thanks, Evan.

E: Yep.

S: So no Jay this week. So know who's that noisy Jay? We'll be back in two weeks to pick up where he left off there. So I'm going to go to a couple of questions.

E: Bob can make a noise. Bob.

S: Can make a noise.

C: Bob does that a lot.

E: This is Bob sipping coffee.

Emails (1:08:01)

S: All right, so the first e-mail comes from Jeremy from Melbourne, Australia, and Jeremy writes in the show 2 weeks ago. He's referring to episode 1045 during science or fiction. Cara said something like we know that apes can learn sign language. When discussing of the river pigs alleged intelligence. I thought the narrative of signing apes had been debunked. I relisted to Skeptoids podcast #630 on the subject to confirm my memory wasn't flawed. Love the show and loved seeing you guys in person in Melbourne a few years ago. Thanks for writing Jeremy. So, Cara, I did look up exactly what you said because you, you asked me. Like, yeah, I asked.

C: I was like, did I say sign? Did I say sign language?

S: You said gorillas can't communicate with sign language Was the exact quote, so that's vague and I'm not sure what you remembered or meant by that. So why don't you just tell us what you what you know?

C: Well, just that they can represent objects like they can use a symbolic, they can communicate. Yes, they can't communicate. And that's the difference, right? Language, which is a slippery word. It's super slippery. And it's funny because I just looked at, you know, just a quick sampling of the literature from like maybe 2020 forward. It's all over the place. It does look like most researchers agree that that gorillas or even a chimpanzees, they're not using grammar and that they are babbling from time to time. But they also all agree that they can learn specific signs for specific things, even if it's just operant conditioning.

S: Exactly.

C: Yeah.

S: That's what I found as well. So yeah. Yeah. So. So chimpanzees, you know, gorillas can learn to associate a specific sign with a specific thing, like banana. And when they want a banana, they will make the sign for banana. They can also at times represent their immediate state of being right, an immediate desire or an immediate state, but they can't communicate thoughts and ideas. They can't use language, they can't use syntax. So essentially what they went the a lot of the times, like the the trainers who were saying, look what I showed, you know what I taught, you know, Coco the gorilla or whatever to do. They're cherry picking from a vast, you know, data set and only picking out the things that seemed that they could weave a story, you know, retrofit to some kind of communication. But if you look at all of the data which has been done, what you basically find is that it's nonsensical Babble, Babble, Babble, banana, Babble, Babble, Babble, right? Or banana, blah, blah, blah, bad banana, me banana, banana, me blah, blah, blah, right? It's just very simple. Me banana, you know, that's the extent of the thing. So that is communicating.

C: Yeah, it is. And some people argue that it's a type of language that is just very simplistic. But no, it doesn't have grammar.

S: No, but it's not like they're not using language the way we do. They're not conveying thoughts and ideas and and it's it has been massively over interpreted over the. Years.

C: Absolutely. It's been over.

S: And then clawed back by a more objective, skeptical reviews of the actual evidence.

C: But what I don't like is then the, the kind of counterclaim that and, and even I mean, not to call you out, Jeremy, but like the way that you worded it. And of course I get it because you're calling me out on, on my wording, which was quite broad, is I thought the narrative of signing apes had been debunked. Well, no ape sign.

S: Yeah, they do sign.

C: Yeah, like there's no debunking.

S: They can't learn signs for a specific but.

E: It's not language.

S: It's not language. I think that's a better.

C: It's not language. Yeah, if, if, if you. Yeah, depending on how you define language, like I'm, I'm reading an article that's kind of an interesting one. And, and like the end of their abstract where they looked at, you know, studies from the 1960s up until they published in 2020, and they said. Focusing on symbol use by chimpanzees and bonobos, we describe evidence that argues for understanding of words, including capacities for declarative communication. We conclude that the many decades of research using a variety of symbol systems challenges the absolutist position that chimpanzees and bonobos cannot learn or understand the concept of a word. Word. So it's like, it's wiggly. Yeah, it's in the middle.

E: Confirmed by studying the brains of the chimpanzees and the gorillas and well, they don't the physical components just are not there that. That is correct.

S: They do not have the language area that we do.

C: Yeah. But is that a question of they don't have it because it wasn't used?

S: Well though but they have a, they have a proto language. Area exactly right.

C: It's like a primitive version of.

S: It it's definitely much less than humans, but it's not zero. We didn't. It's not human language didn't start from nothing. It evolved out of primate language, which is very because it's a proto language. It's very primitive, it's very simple, it's straightforward, but we obviously elaborated on it tremendously. So it's really just where along that spectrum are they? It's not 0, it's not human level, it's not full sentences with grammar. It's one or two words, simple, immediate. I want banana like me banana. That's it. That's about as complicated as it gets.

E: And.

C: It's true.

E: With other mammals that you know, maybe dolphins or.

C: Well, dogs, a good example of dogs. They can't do expressive or declarative, but they'd have receptive. So you can say get Fox and it knows to get the Fox toy.

E: You can recognize words.

S: Can they can.

C: Yeah, so but they can't do declarative. But no, like Dolphins are not signing.

S: But you know the the dog mats where they have like a dozen words and the dogs will put their paw on the words to communicate?

E: That's all bullshit.

S: I've seen those videos. I am not convinced at all it's the same.

C: I think we need more studies. It's like it.

S: Feels like they're hitting words and then the person over interprets what they're saying and maybe.

E: Acts in a certain.

S: Way maybe they've learned to again like operately associate this button with going outside or something, but they're not putting together other words and communication.

C: No, yeah, they're putting, they're doing top left means go out this over.

S: Here means I get a treat that's like the probably the extent of.

C: It well, and the annoying thing is those grids always have some combination that always makes sense no matter what you say. It's like, treat me mom, mom.

S: Me treat people to a dog, there's nothing in there as a trick. Yeah, that would. That would trip them up.

C: But the reason that we know that dogs can do the receptive when it comes to symbols for objects is like, I have a friend whose dog can do this. I've like seen it. But also obviously it's been studied really well is that you can say the name of the object. The dog gets the object like from the from a basket in the other room. And then you can say the name of something that's not in the basket, and they'll get something that they don't know the name for. So they do know. Like these are the things I've learned and these are things I don't know. So maybe it's one of those, and that's pretty cool.

S: They're pretty smart.

C: Yeah.

S: They're just, they're just nothing evolved language the way we did.

C: No, no, no, no. And I think ultimately the question is and, and it's an operational definition question. I'm not a linguist, so I don't know where the where the threshold is, but at what point does communication become language? What do we call? Because they definitely communicate most animals. Sure, of course. Yeah.

B: I mean, I think you need syntax, syntax, grammar and a few things like that in order to classify it right? I mean not. Just that it's.

S: Also, how sophisticated are the ideas that they're communicating right? Can they philosophize? No. OK.

E: No evidence of that right?

S: You have another e-mail that comes from Erin, who says hi all. Just writing in to note that in this week's episode, Evan mentioned that a ham sandwich was how Mama cast went. This is fairly humiliating. This is a fairly humiliating myth. She actually died of a heart attack. It's so easy to hear pop culture myths and not question them, especially if one has no real interest in the person in question and doesn't care enough to look into it. So no judgement here. I just think it's important that this myth, like Annie, doesn't keep on being perpetuated. Love the show, keep up the amazing work that you do. Evan, what do you have to say for yourself?

E: Jay was the one who brought up the ham sandwich in in I can't even remember what he was talking about, but death by a ham sandwich was his general comment. And then my reaction to to that. I just blurted out that that's how Mama cast went, because that sort of is the what it's known for, right? I mean, I mean, because what, what else could it? Could it be that Jay? So it was just more of a playoff of what Jay was saying rather than a statement of fact? I take the point. I hear you.

S: That's funny because I never heard this myth. Or if I did, I didn't. Remember it?

J: Oh really?

S: So I I really never did.

E: Wow.

S: Not I'm not big into the Mamas and the Papas or whatever. I assumed I knew she died of a heart attack. I assumed you used ham sandwich as a metaphor for heart attack. You know what I mean? Because people do that. People say like he died, he died of a pork sandwich or whatever like that means he died of a heart attack.

C: But that's funny, that's what I thought. Maybe you had heard it. I.

S: Didn't think you made literally died of a ham sandwich.

C: No, but that's what people said. No, that's.

S: So yeah, so apparently, apparently it's that word gets used so often. No, she was just coming off like a 36 hour stint and her assistant did prepare a ham sandwich and leave it on her night stand, but she went to bed without ever touching it. She didn't eat the ham sandwich and she had a heart attack. There was an autopsy and the autopsy determined that she died of a heart attack and that there were no drugs in her system and so natural causes she had a heart attack. She pushed herself too far. There's also, you know, she had obviously issues with obesity. She did at the time. Nobody knew what they were doing. Like in terms of treating obesity, she was treated with amphetamines, which is like the worst thing you could do.

B: Oh gosh. Although apparently she wasn't using them at. 4 by the.

S: Way she wasn't using them at the time because they nothing was found in her symptoms in her system. But that would not have been a healthy way to treat her. Her weight and just sort of crash dieting with amphetamines would, could have done harm, you know, certainly was it would not have been healthy for her heart. So she was only 32. Very tragic.

C: Yeah. That's so young, you.

S: Know, yeah, I mean, yeah, just a victim of circumstance of the poor medicine of the time, you know.

B: It's funny, I had a completely different reaction. I remember that. I remember Evan saying that, and I remember thinking, wait, I recently read somewhere that she didn't die from the ham sandwich, that she died of a heart attack. I was trying to remember what my source was and then and then it was just like too late to the conversation. Chimed. Right. Yeah, it moved on because. Gone like.

E: It was a throw. Jay Jay was just being, you know, yeah, trying to be funny and I just, you know, yeah, yeah. Threw in the the. Following comments SO.

B: It should have chimed in though. I should.

C: Have, but that's often how these things are. It's like when I said the sign language thing, it was like I was we were doing science or fiction.

S: Off the cup throwaway comments that we didn't vet, but we do. We do have to be careful about that. I need to be careful about that in post production, which I do actually, I do filter out a lot of these offhand comments. I'm like, is that actually true? And then that's, and then and I will either make a correction or I'll just edit it out. So in this case, though, I didn't think you were making a claim. I thought it was just being a euphemism. So that's why I didn't trigger, you know, my post production.

E: And you you would did all. You also did not have knowledge of the of the history of. Yeah, I didn't know the comment.

S: I didn't know that that was a thing. So I do think this is an important myth to correct because her family is really hurt by it. They really find that it's very more than annoying. Like it is really depressing that this is how she's remembered, You know, that this. Persistent myth dogs her you know, 50.

E: Years and whatever part of the culture in a way. Yeah. We know. We know how hard it is to expunge the record, you know, and get it correct. Once it's in the culture, it's very hard, if not very hard to. Correct.

S: Very hard. So we certainly don't want to contribute to that. We're happy to correct that and to, you know, increase awareness that that is a myth. It's not not how she died. She died of a heart attack. So yeah, keep that in mind. All right Yep.

Name That Logical Fallacy (1:20:38)

Topic: I’ve been listening for many years and this is my first time contacting the show. For context, my earliest memories are the “inflating Earth” and “birds vs. monkeys”. I was watching a clip of some internet rando saying evolution couldn’t have happened because [paraphrasing] “half of an organ wouldn’t work” (e.g., an incomplete eye wouldn’t have vision as we know it”). Obviously we’ve heard the whole “eye” thing a million times and this betrays a lack of understanding of adaptation and evolution (and is quite ableist), but I had a sudden realization that this might also be a very specific logical fallacy. Jason Massachusetts

S: We're going to do a name that logical fallacy. This from Jason in Massachusetts, and Jason writes. I've been listening for many years and this is my first time contacting the show. For context, my earliest memories are the inflating Earth and birds versus monkeys. That's like the second.

B: Year. That's way back.

S: Yeah, way back I was watching a clip of some Internet rando saying evolution couldn't have happened because paraphrasing half an organ wouldn't work, EG an incomplete eye wouldn't have vision as we know it.

B: It's not.

S: Obviously we've heard the whole eye thing a million times, and this betrays a lack of understanding of adaptation and evolution and is quite ableist. But I had a sudden realization that this might be a very specific logical fallacy. So that's, yeah, we could talk about what what's wrong with that claim and then see if that one or more logical fallacies are occurring. Jason in a postscript said which fallacy he thought it was. I won't say that until we discuss it. So for background, it is a very common evolution denying creationist intelligent design. Yeah, claim that. Well, you know, how could you evolve wings? Like what purpose would they serve until you got to the point where they were good enough to fly, right? What good is half a wing? I've actually had somebody say that exact quote to me. What good is half a wing or, you know, like, what were our ancestors walking around with like half an eye hanging out of their head? Like, really ridiculous straw man, right? But of course, that's not what evolutionary biologists think. That's not what would have to have happened, you know, And things work for for what they evolved to do at every step of the way. But the key bit that they're missing is that a current structure, right, did not necessarily have to evolve directly to its current function. It could have evolved through a series of other functions that it was perfectly adapted to or adapted to just fine and then got coapted to a new use, right? So for example, wings like feathers were probably for insulation and then maybe display and then they'd be helping to capture prey and then.

E: Jumping from branch to branch.

S: Extending the duration of a leap or a jump and maybe gliding and then flying.

C: Well, we know for a fact that our hands were flippers, yeah.

S: Right.

C: Like, we know that, right? Like, we crawled out of the ocean.

S: Yeah. Slowly.

C: Mammals. We didn't need a lot from nothing. No, they were. They came from like flipper hands. Like flipper hands.

S: And then they were walking on the bottom of the floor of the ocean.

C: Yeah.

S: So they adapted to be able to hold up weight and then to on land, and then to claws and then to hands. Yeah, whatever, he went.

C: And eyes too, like eyes spot every step of the way to detect light. Yeah, that's all they do. They just detected whether it was light or dark.

S: Right, exactly.

C: And they got better and better and better.

S: Every step of the way, yeah. Even just being able to say light is that way, you know, the surface of the ocean is in that direction and that dark is in this way that's going deeper into the ocean is adaptive and useful. So yeah, half an eye is actually extremely useful. And it's not 1/2 an eye, right? It's a whole, but less evolved a whole.

E: Proto I don't know what you want to.

S: Call, but even even that's the thing like our terminology, so buys like if you say it's a proto eye, you're implying that it's on its way to becoming it.

E: Right, which you can. Which we have the benefit of hindsight, you exact pun and.

S: Only know that in hindsight at the time. It's not a proto anything. It's it's is what it is and it's adapted to what how it functions.

C: And there are organisms alive today who have those versions of things. We have to remember that too, and those things are alive right now.

B: They still exist and all. You could see all the intermediary steps that our eye went through is extent right? So are we going to try? To.

E: But what's the logical fallacy specifically? Here I mean.

C: I I think it's black or white thinking.

B: I think straw man, and I thought straw man, personal incredulity are kind of like in the ball.

C: Oh interesting. See, I see it as black and white, like it's either this or it's not that at all.

E: Oh, did this or that?

B: No false dichotomy.

C: Yeah, yeah.

S: So I think this, I think the reason why this can be so hard is because the informal logical fallacies are so context dependent. It kind of depends on how exactly you formulate your claim. And so we could, we're just, we're like, we're not responding to someone's specific claim here. It's more of just the idea of the this kind of argument. But the the the most, the only thing we have in quotes here here is half an organ wouldn't work. And so I think it is absolutely a straw man. I think definitely that is happening here because.

C: Because nobody's claiming.

S: Nobody's claiming nobody. That is a straw man version of evolutionary theory that you know you it would require evolving through 1/2 formed version of the final quote, UN quote final structure and all of that is is hindsight bias. It's not 1/2 anything. It's not a proto anything, it's not a pre anything. It is what it is. It doesn't know what future descendants will, you know, use it for and evolve it in other directions. It just is what it is. So I think that's the biggest one. I do think there's, there's a lot of non sequiturs in there, which is kind of just a generic logical fallacy, But I could see the, I think so he said, I'll tell you what he said because I think you're, you're kind of on the same page as him. He said it was a Nirvana fallacy because which I'm not sure if that fits really Nirvana fallacy. It's not perfect, so it's useless.

C: Yeah. I mean, they he's kind of making that claim kind of. Yeah, I think it's all of them.

S: Yeah. So it can. It depends on how you frame it. It's like, yes, 1/2 an organs not perfect, so it's worthless. That's kind of a Nirvana fallacy. But it's there's a piece that you need that it's it's only half of or whatever, it's only partial current utility, but it's a fully formed something else, right. So it's just that's what makes it a non sequitur and a straw man. It's it's you know, I mean, it's looking at it incorrectly, right. That's fast. I always find it fascinating to deconstruct, you know, logic. But I guess we could also say it's not purely a logic problem, it's a false premise, right? And the false premise is what I said. The false premise is that a things evolve to their current use. You know the only possible history of things that it evolved to its current use.

C: Well, and it's hard to blame somebody for seeing evolution that way because sadly, until you're at like a college level, it's often taught. Yeah, I agree. Which I don't like and it's represented that way in totally in popular culture. But, you know, I think a lot of this, and often when we talk about pseudoscience or like woo, or especially when we're talking about like charlatans, we'll ask questions like, do they know that it's bullshit or like, are they peddling intentionally or have they, like, bought what they're selling? And often the answer is, does it really matter? But I think in these situations where you're talking to a friend and your friend is like, wait a minute, but how could this happen? It is important to know where they're coming from and to dig deep into what their actual argument is. Are they making a black and white assumption? Are they making a straw man? Is it a Nirvana fallacy? And you can figure that out by asking follow up questions because sometimes you can actually counter it if you know what they're trying to say. And maybe, you know, maybe this person is just like, I'm a creationist and I'm dying in the wool and I'm never changing my mind. But maybe they're like, I just don't get it. Help me get it.

S: Yeah, they rarely are saying help me get it in my experience, but I hear what you're saying. But The thing is it's important to understand. So the false premise right or the unstated major premise is really hard to detect in yourself, right? Cuz you it's a premise you are not aware you are making and therefore.

C: It's unstated.

S: It's unstated. It's unknown, right. He doesn't realize that that's the The thing is how did how does he react? How do they react when it's pointed out to them? Right. And that, of course, that they never, you know, in my experience, say, oh, Gee, I didn't realize that I was wrong. You know, it's usually they double down in some way. And then maybe later they may realize that they're thinking, yeah, you know, was. Super.

C: Yeah, I guess I give it the benefit of the doubt. I think of like a child, if a child is conceptualizing evolution the way that, you know, popular culture has taught it to them and they're sophisticated enough to go, but half and I wouldn't work right then you go, oh, yeah, that I could see where you would go from here. Let's back it up.

S: Yeah. And I was going to say along those lines that oftentimes pseudo scientists and science and nihilists, et cetera, are debating against like a fifth grade understanding of the science, really elementary school level of scientific understanding. And they think that's the science. It's like, no, that's not the science. That's how it's poorly explained to elementary school students.

C: Yeah.

S: That's the level at which you're operating.

C: That's literally dumbed down science. Yeah, it's like, you know, whenever we do good scicom, I always avoid the term, dumb it down because you don't want it to be simplified to the extent that it's no longer correct. Right.

S: It can't be so simple. It's wrong. It's got to be true as far as it goes.

B: Hello, Michio Kaku.

S: OK, let's move on to science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:30:42)

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Answer	Item
Fiction	{{{fiction}}}
Science	{{{science1}}}

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Unknown science or fiction item
Bob	Unknown science or fiction item
Evan	Unknown science or fiction item

E: It's time for science or fiction.

S: Each week I come up with three science and news items or facts. 2 real, one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Just three regular old news items this week. You guys ready?

E: OK.

S: All right, here we go. Item number one, scientists have built and confirmed a neutrino detector able to detect neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass compared to the multiple tons of other detectors. Item number 2A new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern concrete, requiring 10% less water and releasing 20% less CO2 in its manufacture #3 Researchers have developed and now successfully tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection that works in infants for several years after a single treatment. Cara, go first.

C: OK, so a neutrino detector. It's both been built and confirmed. It detects neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass, whatever that means compared to the multiple tons of other detectors. So just like the size of the they, they made it with carbon fiber. I don't know, they just made it lighter. The detector itself. Is that what you mean by detector mass?

S: So I'll tell you that you're going first. The detector mass is basically the substance that's interacting with the neutrinos. Oh.

C: OK, OK, got it. So it's like what what's ever like in the tube when the neutral well, I don't know how to neutrino detector works. I'm thinking of a of a particle accelerator. But yeah, whatever the neutrinos are passing through or something that they're measuring. OK, Roman. A new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern 10% less water releasing 20% less CO2O God, I mean, that could be the case. I mean, they definitely weren't using like modern synthetic chemicals when they built it, developed and successfully tested gene therapy. So you don't say if it's in PEEP. Oh, no, you said that works in infants. OK, So that means people, infants.

S: Not necessarily.

C: OK. All right. So tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection for several years after a single treatment. So this is some sort of genetic modification that makes the babies. So instead of like antiretrovirals that moms are taking during pregnancy, the little baby, what would be the point of that? Is it in utero? This is confusing to me. Why would you want that? You would need it earlier than when they're infants.

S: So this is to prevent vertical transmission from the. Mother to the baby.

C: OK, so it is OK.

S: Mainly through breastfeeding.

C: OK, so in case she she gave birth to a bit, even if she had HIV, she gave birth to a baby that was HIV negative. If she's going to continue to breastfeed, OK, we want to reduce that risk. So the gene therapy would make it so that somehow it's not transmissible. I mean, if that's the case, I that gene therapy should be able to be applied then to adults later. So we just can't catch it. I mean, that would be cool to just make a whole generation of people who are HIV resistant. That one seems least likely, but it could have just been in mice. I have no idea On the neutrino one and the Roman concrete. I'm glad you didn't say that it was like stronger or something because I feel like we just talked about that last week and even though it was really strong, I doubt it's stronger than modern concrete. But is it more sustainable? I like those noises, but I know. This is so tough. Maybe I'll I'm going to say the concrete 1 so thinking.

S: Noises. OK, Bob.

B: Let's see. So for the third one, gene therapy, HIV, yeah. We, I think we've made so many advances in HIV therapies over the years, especially recently, that this this doesn't surprise me at all. So I'm gonna definitely have to go with that one as science. Let's see Roman concrete and more sustainable. I mean, I I'm trying to remember the latest that we heard about whether it was actually superior to what is it? What is it called? The Cortland cement, if I remember it is better in some ways, but the fact that it could be better but also more sustainable seems less likely. So I'm going to say that it's less sustainable. So I'll say oh, wait, no, fuck Roman is more sustainable. No, I'm going to say that it's less. It's, I'm going to have to say that one's fiction, then the concrete one. But I'm, I'm really having a hard time doing that because of #1 neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass. That's crazy because, because I mean, neutrinos, if you've listened to anything I've said about neutrinos in the past 20 years, you, they, you know, they, they can go through like light, literally a neutrino can go through like light years of lead before interacting with, with an atom. It's just like, they're so ghost, like they just don't interact with anything. And the modern detectors that I'm aware of have like all like ultra pure, like many, many tons, many swimming pools worth of like ultra pure water. And they they they collide with an atom and they create like drink of radiation. So the fact that they can do with three kilograms now, All right, 3 kilograms. It must be aerogel mass that's very super lightweight, super diffuse. So it so it's a large area that a lot of neutrinos would go through. That's the only way that that makes sense. But I'm super curious about that one. But I think you were trying to totally screw me on that one, Steve. So I'm going to go with the the Roman concrete is more sustainable is fiction.

S: Okay. And Evan?

E: But you clearly did not see that scientific documentary called 2012 in which neutrinos, it turns out, definitely impact and have have an impact on the Earth score, right? Which causes a shift of some kind and the crust becomes unstable and starts to and John Cusack goes crazy. So you I think you missed that in your analysis of this particular news item.

B: So.

E: Had you brought that into this discussion, you'd come to the same conclusion that this one is probably science. I know you know so much more about neutrino detectors than I will likely ever know, so congratulations on that. The Roman concrete one more sustainable. I was when Cara was discussing this or speaking her mind on this, I was having many of the same thoughts. So thank you for confirming my thoughts there, Cara, because I, we did talk about this last week and when Steve was discussing his trip to Malta and the concrete there's that's when it came up and how durable, I mean, you know, long lasting it, it, it is, but that does not mean more sustainable than modern concrete. So I have, I think I'm going to join both of you in saying that that one's going to be the fiction. And then, Carrie, you also brought up a good point about the third one about the gene therapy that works in infants. For several years. You asked if it was human infants and Steve said not necessarily. So with some other animal, they probably tested this on, I don't think, which led me to believe I was thinking maybe this one's the fiction. But you brought up that point. Now I'm pretty sure that one's going to be science. So I agree, concrete fiction in this case.

S: All right, you all agree on number 2, so we'll start. Number one, scientists have built and confirmed a neutrino detector able to detect neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass compared to multiple tons of other detectors. You guys all think this one is science and this one is science.

B: Wow, this is surprising.

S: Bob was going to be the most surprised by this.

B: Holy crap, man.

S: So yeah, this is the CONUS experiment. They set it up outside of a fission nuclear power plant because nuclear fission creates neutrinos and they were able to use it to detect the excess neutrinos from the nuclear power plant. They knew like what the background number would be and over a very long period of time said, yeah, we had extra, you know, neutrino detections, so coming from the nuclear power plant. So yeah, Bob, this was it's a new sort of interaction.

B: So whoa, wait.

S: Yeah, this is a new type of neutrino. I fully understand it, but let me just tell you what the description is. All right. So it's, so it's the, it's, I think the key is that the neutrinos are scattering off of the anatomic nuclei of germanium. So they they, it says in this process, detritos do not scatter off the individual components of the atomic nuclei in the detector, but rather coherently with the entire nucleus. This significantly increases the probability of a very small but observable nuclear recoil. So I guess because it's hitting the like the whole nucleus, the nucleus reacts in an observable way. The says the recoil caused by neutrino scattering is comparable to a ping pong ball bouncing off a car, with the detection being the changing motion of the car. So not very much, but this was above the threshold of detection. So the the scattering partners are the atomic nuclei of germanium. Observing this effect requires low energy neutrinos, such as those produced in large numbers in nuclear reactors. But yeah, the dramatic thing here was just three kilograms of detector mass in this detector. So they said this is a proof of concept. They've actually proven this technique works. This really opens up neutrino research, because then you don't, you don't necessarily need these vast underground pools of pure water or whatever as your detector or the ice I know in like the Antarctic neutrino detector.

B: Right. Maybe that's how Jordy detects neutrinos with his little visor. Maybe space?

S: Yeah, sure.

E: That's a Star Trek reference, Cara. Well, thank you.

S: All right, let's move on to #2 A new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern concrete, requiring 10% less water and releasing 20% less CO2 in its manufacture. You guys all think this one is fiction, although it sounds like for various reasons and this one is the fiction.

E: The fiction. Yay.

S: So frustrating, Karen.

E: I wish you.

S: Had told her to guess.

E: But all for the wrong reasons.

S: So what the study showed was that Roman concrete is exactly has exactly the same water use and CO2 release as modern concrete. However, they said it's more sustainable because it's stronger and more durable. So it would it's only more sustainable in that it would have to be replaced less often, which I think that you alluded to it is because it's stronger and more durable. But otherwise, like in the manufacturing process, it's the same, it's the same amount of water use, same amount of CO2 release. But they did say, you know, we, you know, long term could be useful to, you know, use the old, the older recipe, if you will, because it's it is more durable. All right. All of this means that researchers have developed and now successfully tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection that works in infants for several years after a single treatment is science. This is actually potentially very huge. There's a few details in here. So care I could understand why you're a little perplexed without knowing these details. So this was done in primates, in macaques, because there is a like whatever, a primate version of HIV that they can use as their.

C: Yeah. It's called SIV. Yeah, Simian.

S: Yeah, Simian, that's right. That's exactly right. And they're, they're testing something that they've that's been around for a while called broadly neutralizing antibodies. Now, they this is already exists as a treatment to prevent infants from contracting HIV from their mothers. The problem is it requires an infusion, and it only lasts for a short time. So you need repeated infusions of these broadly neutralizing antibodies. And that is not practical in the parts of the world where this is the highest risk, right?

C: Yeah.

S: So unfortunately, lots of newborns, lots of babies get infected with HIV. It's a huge problem. 300 children are infected with HIV every day.

E: Oh my. Gosh, yeah.

S: More than 100,000 children acquire HIV annually, primarily through mother to child transmission after birth from breastfeeding. So it's a major vector for HIV. And of course you're infected as as an infant, like that's that's your life, right. What they were testing was using adeno associated virus AAV. So this is a virus that itself can insert genes into DNA. So you don't, it's not, there's no CRISPR involved here. It's just AAV that's been altered with a gene that and the gene makes the broadly neutralizing antibodies. So they infect the muscle with the virus, which inserts the gene into the muscle tissue. Muscle tissue survives for a long time, which is good. And those, the muscle tissue then starts cranking out the broadly neutralizing antibodies. Now, there's a reason why we're not going to be using this in adults, unfortunately. It's because when you do this, even in older children, and I mean just like even if you wait a couple of months, there tends to be a lot of immune rejection and so.

C: You need like a pretty naive you.

S: Need to get the babies when their immune system is naive enough that they accept it and they don't reject it and they this study showed that it works better in the younger infants. You know, you want to get them within a couple of weeks of being born. But it worked for for the macaques. It provided good protection from HIV infection for three years, which is like their adolescence. So the hope is that it would work in human babies, you know, until they're like older children or even until they're adolescents. Definitely long, you know, to get definitely for if it's a, if it's a couple of years even that's through the breastfeeding period, right. So that would get you through the point where you're where most children who get infected or getting infected through through breastfeeding. And again, it's a one and done treatment. One injection, you're done.

C: Yeah, it's way better than like prep or something. Where you have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

S: So it's very practical for, again, the the people who need it the most.

C: Yeah.

S: So very hopeful. Very, very hopeful.

C: Because there's still parts of the world. I mean, I remember when I was in Eswatini, it's got the highest HIV rate in the world. And like most of the kids we worked with were HIV positive. Yeah, it's. Supposed to it is, yeah.

S: OK. So that's a hopeful technology. Good job everyone sniffed at it again.

E: Yeah, thanks for your help friends.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:46:18)

“Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.”  – ― Baruch Spinoza, (description of author)

S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.

E: Be not astonished at new ideas, for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many. Baruch, Spinoza.

S: Yep, that's kind of the inverse of the logical fallacy of argument to add popular. Yeah, it's popular, therefore it must be true. This is the. It's not popular, therefore it must be wrong.

E: Right, same idea.

S: Though neither of which are true. It's irrelevant. You know popular acceptance, right is irrelevant to whether something is true or not. I would say a broad consensus of experts is different. Again, the informal logical fallacies are context dependent. If you're talking about yeah, pretty much all climate scientists think that anthropogenic global warming is happening, that's not an argument add popularly. That's a consensus of expert opinion.

E: But we can use this, say, on a more modern concept, UFOs for example. Our culture is saturated with UFO belief. All the saturation in the world does not make any of it true.

S: Right.

E: Yeah.

S: And the popular unpopularity of GMOs doesn't mean that they're not good. Because. Because they are, in my opinion, and the opinion of the vast majority of scientists, that that is the issue still where there's the hugest disconnect between popular opinion and scientific opinion.

C: And especially scientists who work in that agriculture. Yeah.

S: Absolutely. So, yeah. So it depends on who you're talking about. But yeah, it's a good, the general idea here, popular, you know, opinion doesn't really predict whether a scientific idea is true or not. And I think he's focusing on new ideas because new ideas generally take time to become accepted. Sure, depending on what they are, you know.

E: Yeah, and he was, you know, what was he, Renaissance Baruch Spinoza? I think it was just after the Renaissance. So we're talking about some new idea, new ideas, or ideas that were lost for a very long time that had just started coming back.

S: Born in 1632, so yeah, right. Yeah. Where you are in history kind of puts a different spin on that. If you're this sort of nation, scientific era, pretty much everything that was all of the established ideas were wrong.

E: Right.

S: You know, you know, new scientific ideas were probably way more likely to be true than whatever they were replacing. So that would definitely, you could see how somebody who was living at that time be like, don't reject new ideas because they go against the authority or because they're unconventional or because they're new. Imagine living at a time are pretty much most of the things that the authorities believed were wrong.

E: Oh my gosh.

J: Imagine that.

E: You thank goodness we live in the modern.

S: $8 at the time, not not talking about the politicians.

E: Right, right. Controlled by the churches and so much.

S: Other and even that is not like you know, you doctors believed nonsense impact numbers.

C: But nobody knew that they that it wasn't true. That's true.

S: Yeah, but then somebody says, I think there might be germs causing these, like he's crazy.

B: He's a witch, burn him. I don't know, I just want out of this timeline. Right.

S: You gonna roll the dice for a random timeline or you want to be able to pick your timeline?

B: Oh, picking it would be nice.

S: Picking it would.

E: Be well sure.

S: All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

E: Thanks, Steve. See you next.

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