SGU Episode 395

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SGU Episode 395
9th Feb 2013
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 394                      SGU 396
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
GH: George Hrab
Quote of the Week
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
Democritus
Links
Download Podcast
SGU Podcast archive
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, February 6, 2013, and this is your host Steven Novello. Joining this week are Bob Novella,

B: Hey, everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson,

R: Hello, everyone.

S: And Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, my friends, how are you?

S: Good. How are you, Evan?

E: I'm doing fine, thank you.

S: Jay is conspicuously absent this week. Jay and his wife, just a couple of days ago had their first child.

E: Yay!

R: Slacker.

B: Baby Dylan.

R: You gonna let a baby get in the way of SGU, come on.

S: He's gotta get his priorities straight.

R: Yeah.

S: So Jay is busy not sleeping, and taking care of his wife and newborn.

E: Yeah, well.

R: . . . poop.

E: He had to know that was coming.

B: He's been practicing for that for years.

R: I wonder if the baby will have Jay's unique abilities to pee.

(laughter)

R: Long distances.

E: Reference from two Dragon Cons ago.

S: We'll have to see.

This Day in Skepticism (1:07)

R: Hey, so, happy Space Medicine Day.

E: Space Medicine!

R: It's not really a day. But it should be. It could be. I don't know. I just like the phrase "space medicine." Because if you put "space" in front of just about anything it becomes more exciting.

S: Space monkey.

R: Yeah!

S: Yeah.

R: Way better. We should talk about that, by the way. That space monkey that Iran apparently didn't send up. I don't know. That's a whole other thing. (laughter) But, not what I'm talking about.

E: There were pictures. That thing was so cute, in a little suit.

S: Strapped down like it was. Oh my god.

R: Yeah, but he didn't take any Instagrams from space. So, I don't know. But no, today, this day in history, 1949, February 9, 1949, the first Department of Space Medicine was established at a U.S. Air Force academy. The School of Aviation at Randolph Field, Texas. You might be able to guess what space medicine's all about. It's making sure astronauts don't die when they go into space, and all of the many things that entails. The guy who was the first professor of space medicine was Hubertus Strughold, and, at this point, it becomes less fun. Because, he was a horrific Nazi, who did horrible, horrible, horrible things.

S: He was a literal Nazi?

R: He was literally a Nazi. There were documents uncovered during the Nuremberg trials that linked him to really horrific medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.

E: Oh, wow.

R: Yeah, really horrific. U.S. space history is unfortunately littered with Nazis, because that was one of the plunders that the U.S. got after the war, was the brains behind a lot of Germany's advancements. And so one of those was Hubertus Strughold.

S: Well, that's that famous line from The Right Stuff, you know: "Our Nazis are better than their Nazis." The U.S. space program beating out the Russian, the Soviet space program.

R: Right. So, yeah, there used to be an aeromedical library at Brooks Air Force Base named after him, but in 1977, when these documents were uncovered, it was renamed.

S: I betcha the whole field of space medicine really took off after people started going into space.

R: You think? (laughter)

S: Prior to that, not that there was nothing they could do, but I mean prior to that, I betcha it was mostly theoretical work.

B: Kind of like Xenu biology?

R: A lot of dunking people in tanks of water. Things like that. I don't know.

S: I actually have a colleague who, while they were at Yale, they're not there anymore, but they were working on space medicine. They had a grant from NASA and they were suspending rats to see how they, if they, how their anti-gravity walking system would develop if they were raised essentially suspended to simulate zero gravity. The thinking being that if you had a baby born in space and they grew up in zero gravity, they would never develop certain parts of their nervous system that are adapted to gravity.

R: Right.

E: Space baby.

B: And they would duplicate that by hanging them?

S: Suspending them from their rear legs.

B: Suspending them?

S: Yeah.

E: Funny they never got to the human trials for that. (laughter)

B: Didn't NASA have those anti-gravity rooms like they showed in I Dream of Jeannie? Do you remember that?

S: No.

R: No.

E: Anti-gravity rooms . . . I Dream of Jeannie?

S: I remember I Dream of Jeannie.

B: I remember, in a few episodes, they had a room where you walked in, they hit a switch and the gravity was turned off. Even as a kid, I was like, that's baloney!

E: I think that was Barbara Eden just blinking her eyes.

R: She didn't have to blink here eyes, that was Bewitched.

E: A nod and a blink.

S: No, no, Bewitched was the twitchy nose. Jeannie was the blinking of the eyes.

R: Oh, right. She did the crossing the arms.

S: Remember when Jeannie had the drops put in her eyes and she couldn't blink and her magic was on the fritz? Come on.

R: No. I don't remember. Why. . . (garbled) What is with you guys and your encyclopedic knowledge of I Dream of Jeannie?

S: Of attractive magical women?

R: I just remembered what Barbara Eden looked like, so never mind.

B: Major Nelson never availed himself of her talents.

News Items

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Russian Lake Monster (5:30)

LiveScience: Reports Surface of Monster Lurking in Russian Lake

S: Well, Evan, I understand there's a lake monster in Russia.

E: (laughs) Where did you read that, Steve?

S: The Siberian Times.

E: It's true. It's true, yeah, the world is . . .Steve and everyone, the world is full of lake monsters. And it seems that wherever human beings encounter very large lakes, there's bound to be a reported monster that lives in the lake. For example, we have Nessie, the monster from Loch Ness in Scotland; we have Champ, in Lake Champlain in New York, Wally, from Wallowa Lake in Oregon; and Woodsy from Lake of the Woods in Ontario, Canada. Right?

S: Those are imaginative names.

E: Yes. (he laughs)

B: The better to pull in the tourists, my friend.

E: Yes, exactly. And that leads us into this week's news item about the supposed lake monster of Lake Labynkyr in Siberia. And our friends over at, well, I learned about this from livescience.com, a really good website. And they informed us this week that a team of scientists from the Russian Geographical Society have reported they found the skeletal remains of an animal that fits the description of the Devil of Lake Labynkyr. Now, you see, you've got to leave it up to a bunch of people in the middle of nowhere of some assemblance of an original name for the creature, right. I mean, I waiting to see if anyone was gonna call it, maybe Labia or Nicker or something.

B: Oooohh!

R: Labia?

E: But thankfully they didn't. Well, you know, for Lake Labynkyr, right? That's about all I could think of. But thankfully they did not do that. (laughter) Thankfully they did not do that. They came up with Devil. Now reports of a lake monster here have, began in the 19th century. The stories have not only prevailed for over a hundred years, but they gained traction to the point where scientists seem to be actively looking for something resembling a monster in the lake. And with the discovery of these remains, they think they might have finally some concrete evidence that something unusual is or was down there. Some accounts of this monster in the lake have put the creature as big as 33 feet in length.

B: That's pretty big.

S: Um hmm.

E: The lake is considered one of the more mysterious lakes in the world because of its temperatures. The temperatures in the area can reach as cold as minus 60 degrees Celsius. Yet the waters in this lake do not completely freeze. They stay at a relatively balmy two degrees Celsius. So, or 36 degrees Fahrenheit. And the folks at the Siberian Times proudly wrote in a recent article that, I quote "Scientists struggle to explain this phenomenon."

S: Are they baffled?

E: No, but they're just struggling, apparently. And for the first time, though, divers have reached the bottom of the lake during these very very cold winter months. So this was some kind of record in that regard, and the dive was made at the request of Yakutsk State University in order to take some footage. They actually brought cameras down to the bottom of the lake, and they also gathered samples of some of the water, flora and fauna. Yet they also apparently found these skeletal remains, right?

S: Oh, good, so we have some hard evidence to examine.

E: Yeee-, exac--, wel—no –o-o-, unfortunately

S: What? But they have skeletons!

E: They did. They saw the skeletons. Unfortunately for some reason they didn't actually bring the bones up from

S: Okay, but they have pictures.

E: Well, suur—of course they have pic--, well, not really.

R: Well, obviously the bones were cursed. They couldn't move them and risk angering Satan. And they probably don't show up on film.

S: Ah! Okay.

B: I'm convinced.

E: What we have are more stories about evidence. Now let's see, where have we heard about this before? Gee, in just about every other paranormal and pseudoscientific encounter.

S: Reports of evidence, but never the evidence itself.

E: Never the evidence itself. Yup. And on the other side of the coin, there are some scientists in Russia that are standing up for reason and skepticism, such as Yury Gerasimov at the Institute of Freshwater Biology at the Russian Academy of Sciences. And he said "If we trust the stories about this 'Devil,' there must be about 1.5 meters [or 5 feet] between its eyes. This means the length of its body must be about 8 meters [or up to 26 feet]," And pike, you know, it's rumored that it's a large pike that grew and grew. But pike don't live so long in order to reach such a big size. In general there are two factors that help fish to grow: nutrition and comfortable water temperatures. So even if the nutrition were perfect there, surely the temperatures were not high enough, so in his opinion the view about a huge pike is a fantastic one.

S: Yeah, so it's an ichthyosaur.

E: Yes.

S: Or a plesiosaur.

E: Oh, whatever pleases you.

S: Or it's a labiasaur. We'll name it after . . .

E: Plus, you gotta think about the plausibility. I mean, how could a creature that large, first of all, evade scientific detection and (b) actually survive in an environment like that? What would its food source be, right? Wouldn't it gobble up most of its limited resources that would be under there? And what about the population? You know, there had to be some sort of sufficient breeding population in order for this thing to even be around in the first place. Where are the evidence of more of these creatures?

S: Well, Evan. What about the coelacanth? They dug that up after thinking it was extinct for millions of years. And how do you know there isn't some underground connection that connects to a larger body of water, maybe even an ocean, that's bringing in an endless supply of food.

E: Those are interesting points, Steve. And, you know, I think, perhaps, some people tie the fact that because this lake does not totally freeze in the very frigid, frigid winter months, is that, scientists are not really baffled so much by this. They do have plausible theories, because it's a region of a lot of seismic activity. Fissures can open up and stuff, leading to warm conditions coming up through the bottom of the lake that ultimately heat the lake so there's perhaps some volcanic activity going on in the region. And yes, Steve, I guess it could open up to, one of these areas could wind up opening up underground to some other regions.

S: Essentially, and I'm throwing this out because that's what's they're saying, the believers, but they're just making that up. They don't have any evidence that there's actually some kind of hidden underground connection to another lake. And even that, I mean, how big could it be, especially if they haven't found it?

E: It's all speculation. There is no solid evidence. And, once again, the legend of this lake monster continues, and will continue.

S: Yeah. Well, like all of them, the issue can be easily resolved by just finding some hard evidence. Skeleton, for example. But it'll never be resolved the other way. How much time has to go by, like with Loch Ness, without finding evidence of the actual creature itself before the mystery mongers will give up? Never, it seems, right?

E: Right. Or people admit to having floated the balsam wood out there and taken the photograph of it, you know, admitted hoaxsters. It doesn’t matter. That doesn't dissuade the true believers either.

S: Yeah. Even if 95% are hoaxes, there's still that five percent that we can't explain.

E: No monsters, no remains of monsters, no monster poop. I mean, come on.

Bones of Richard III (13:01)

BBC News: Richard III dig: DNA confirms bones are king's

S: Yeah, I mean it's not finding the bones of a long-dead British king under a parking lot, or something like that.

B: Oh, boy. Nice segue. This news item was downright ubiquitous this week. It was crazy. Everywhere I turned, there it was. We're getting emails. Every website I went to, everyone's talking about this. And all because a skeleton was found under a parking lot, or car park. And of course, there's a little bit more to it than that. It's a very special skeleton. In fact, it's been confirmed to belong to England's last Plantagenet king, King Richard III. The final monarch to die on a battlefield, and the death that saw the start of the Tudor dynasty that lasted over a century. Now Plantagenet (pronouncing it Plant' a jen et)

S: It's pronounced Plan TA jen et.

B: It's the family name of a line of kings from Henry II to Richard III, that was from 1154 to 1485 A.D., so very long. So clearly this seems to be a significant bag of bones, if it is King Richard, of course. But my first thought upon hearing this was that, was how can they be so sure that it really really is him and not just somebody who was from that time period, or maybe was just related. So I think the best place to start is with his death. What do we know about how King Richard III died?

R: He needed a horse. (laughter)

E: He died o' moidah.

B: He died in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and was said to be buried in Greyfriars Church. The location of which has been lost to history, of course, until now. He was defeated by the Tudor forces, which were half the size of his royal army, which I didn't know. I think they all had phaser rifles or something. That much, minus the lasers, of course, is generally accepted. So does his skeleton support that bit of history? Yes, it does. The skeleton shows ten injuries, eight of them to the skull alone, and they occurred at the time of death. The worst injury was this nasty slice taken off like the back of his head, the back of his skull, probably made with a halberd, they think. And there was a smaller hole a little higher up

S: Oo. Critical hit.

E: Oo. Yeah.

(garbled)

B: Actually, two critical hits. The smaller one they think went fairly deep and was probably caused by a sword. One or both of those most likely caused his death, perhaps instantaneously, if they went deep enough, especially that smaller one. There were also smaller wounds to the head, lots of other ones, plus there were humiliation injuries. Like a pelvic wound that was probably caused by a weapon thrust through his butt. Boy, were they mad at him. Clearly this guy, whoever it may be, died in battle, as Richard was supposed to have. And not from, say, a heart attack or slipping on a banana peel or tripping over a peasant or something. This guy was in battle and it was nasty. So what about the time period, 1485. Is the skeleton that old? And again, the answer is yes. Radio carbon dating places it between the last half of the 15th century and the early 16th century, so that's a perfect match. 1485. Then what about the age of the man's bones when he died? You know if they belonged to a teenager or an old guy, game over. It can't be Richard. And again, Dr. Jo Appleby, who's, she's an osteo-archaeologist from

E: Cool.

B: from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History. She says that the bones belonged to a man in his late twenties or early thirties, which if you know a lot about bones you can pretty much definitively say, just pretty much by looking at them, I think. Richard was 32 years old when he died, so there's another perfect match. This was pretty interesting, another piece of evidence derived from the carbon dating was the fact that this person had a high protein diet. And you might say big deal, but it includes a lot of fish apparently, and that points to a very high status person. In that time, you did not eat a lot of fish if you were a peasant.

E: How do you know he's the king?

?: He ate fish. (laughter)

B: Another thing evident from the bones was a distinct curvature of the spine. This person clearly had scoliosis. And this again matches our modern conception of Richard III. You may remember Shakespeare's play Richard III depicts him as a deformed hunchback. He describes him as "rudely stamped" and "unfinished." In reality, the owner of these bones would not have been as bad as that. His height, his height was probably affected, and one shoulder would have been higher than the other one. And even this makes sense, even though it's not a perfect match to how he's typically envisioned. It makes sense though, because, it makes sense that Shakespeare would exaggerate this. He lived during the Tudor reign, after all. And who would want to piss them off? So in a sense his play could be seen as kind of a, like propaganda of sorts.

S: Mocking Richard III a little bit.

B: for the ruling empire, I mean, that's exactly, that was the story that was being put out there, and he went with it; whether he believed it or not doesn't matter. It just makes a lot of sense that it would be exaggerated. But, it's just not as bad as he's often displayed. Finally there's the king of evidence, DNA. At first it seemed unlikely that DNA would be found, considering the age of the bones. Luckily, though, the conditions under the car park were very good for bone preservation, and they did get some from the teeth and his right femur. And this is really cool: a team of enthusiasts and historians did incredibly difficult and detailed genealogical research, just trying to find out can we find somebody that is clearly part of this family line, and they actually did. They found a seventeenth generation descendant of Richard's sister. And they used her and her son. It's funny because they were, I think it was actually, this was like the last generation because they were no more women in the family, so that line was, is over now. It's not gonna be anymore. So they used, I think they got her DNA, and even though I think she had died relatively recently, they got some of her DNA and the son. And they did a positive match. They were definitely related. But how cool would that be to find out that you're a relative of Richard III.

S: Cool.

B: 'Cause I'm sure they didn't

R: Ehh.

B: What?

R: I don't know. There are better people that I'd rather—

(garbled)

E: --a bit tyrannical.

B: You know, you've got to place him in his time. A lot of kings at that time killed a lot of people in order to get to the top. What we know about him does come from the people that won, you know. And they can pretty much say whatever they want. So he's, I don't think he's

S: Well, this descendant, Bob, he should make a bid to take back the throne for his family. (laughter)

E: Absolutely.

R: I don't think it works that way.

E: You're outta here, Elizabeth!

B: It is a fascinating story, 'cause in my research, of course, I was doing some . . .

S: He needs to like arm wrestle with Prince Charles or something.

B: Yeah, right? It's a fascinating story. So definitely check this out on the web. There's so many angles; there's so many different ways and different aspects to this story. And not just the evidence I've discussed. I mean I found that most compelling, and wanted to talk about that, but there's also, they did facial reconstruction and how that works to find out what he maybe looked like. There's also some controversy going on now about who gets to determine where the skeleton is buried, et cetera. There's lots of different things to look at and learn about this. And if you learn a little bit about history like I did it's be worth it. So check it out.

S: This reminded me. Do you guys remember this? Hurricane Sandy, back in October.

B: What is the connection?

E: I kinda remember it.

R: Yeah, I think I do remember it.

S: Upturned a tree in the New Haven Green

E: Yes.

S: A really old oak tree. And a woman looking at the roots underneath the tree saw a skeleton, like embedded in the roots of the tree.

B: Cool.

E: So cool.

S: And it turned out to be a 200-year-old skeleton. The story is that there was a graveyard on the Green, and just like in the movie Poltergeist, they moved the headstones, but they left the bodies behind

B: Nooooo!

E: Whaaat?

S: when they turned it into a green. So there's like hundreds of bodies under the Green in the middle of New Haven.

B: How awesome is that?

R: Creepy.

E: That was a spooky movie, too.

S: Yeah, and this one just happened to be underneath this famous old oak tree. Pretty cool.

B: Excellent.

E: Hey, Bob, I have a question.

B: Yeah?

E: Is now the winter of our discontent? (laughter)

S: What's the next line?

E: Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

S: Very impressive.

E: Bosom. Bosom.

B: So many plays on words there, it's great.

Scientific Genius ()

Scientific American: Is the age of scientific genius over?

Without Fear ()

The Raw Story: Fearless brain-damaged patients are terrified of suffocation

Feathered Dinosaurs ()

Neurologica Blog: Transition Denial and Feathered Dinosaurs

Who's That Noisy? ()

Answer to last week: Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Questions and Emails ()

Question 1: Tuesday Boy ()

Follow up to WTN from last week

Interview with George Hrab ()

Quick chat about NECSS 2013 - http://www.necss.com

Science or Fiction ()

Item #1: A new systematic review concludes that CT scans in young patients may pose a greater increased risk of cancer than the diagnostic benefits they provide. Item #2: New research shows that people have greater happiness and sense of well being as they age, regardless of when they were born. Item #3: A recent review of research involving 122 personality characteristics finds no significant difference in male and female profiles.

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

References