SGU Episode 1044
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| SGU Episode 1044 |
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| July 12th 2025 |
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A busy intersection bustling with vehicles and pedestrians, showcasing urban movement. |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
"That the scientific literature contains errors, and that attempts to replicate the findings of published studies frequently fail, is surprising to many who are new to science. However, failures to replicate and challenges to the published literature are common in all branches of science." |
Gregory McCarthy, professor of Psychology, Yale University |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro
C: 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 Monday, July 7th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
E: Everybody.
S: Cara, Santa Maria. Howdy, J Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
E: Good evening Monday.
S: Yeah, we're recording on Monday because I'm, I'm leaving for two weeks.
C: Yeah, this feels worse. Feels weird recording on a Monday.
E: Yeah, very strange. Unusual.
J: Yeah. And typically by Monday, I have not gotten a lot of like responses to who's that noisy. And just very coincidentally, we, I did get a ton of responses this time because usually I'm telling Steve, Oh my God, Steve, I didn't get enough, you know, what are we going to do? And because it takes days for people to the numbers to really go up, you know what I mean?
E: Yes, not everybody listens that in the afternoon on Saturday when the episode drops.
S: So if this is this ever happened to you guys, we have a bird trapped in our garage.
J: Hell yeah, Of course, yeah.
E: Well, I had one chapter. In Chimbart. Once, yeah.
S: Yeah, this is a it's a baby red bellied woodpecker.
C: Oh, baby.
S: And it's just dumb. It's just, it hasn't learned yet. I think it's just it's very confused and panicky.
E: Well, you have to teach it, Steve.
S: Well, I don't, you know, we've tried everything we could think of at this point. It's been there. It's been like trapped in a garage for three days.
E: You trapped in the sense it's unwilling, it's afraid to fly, I.
S: Don't think it can find the way out.
B: Did you try opening the garage door?
E: Yeah, that'll help.
S: You haven't tried that yet? You think that might work?
E: Well, yeah. Unlock it so it can use the handle.
C: Well, is there not a bird rescue near you that's.
S: There probably a summer, I don't think they they make house calls.
C: But they might, I don't know. I have a friend who volunteers in Oregon for a bird rescue and she'll go out and pick up the injured bird and take it.
S: Back, it's not injured, it's fine, but maybe we'll try that if we get desperate. But it's The thing is we have kind of a high ceiling in our garage and it's up in the upper half of the garage and it just keeps trying to escape by going up, you know what I mean? It does. It has to go down to get out the garage door, of course, and it just won't do it. It will not get low enough to get out. It just keeps trying to go through. You have like a little vent, vent. Yeah. And the upper part keeps trying to go through the vent which isn't working.
E: I see.
B: Get food out for.
S: It well, we put my daughter put food and water out for it, but a little concerned that will sort of teach it to stay there, which we don't want to do. We don't want it to die, you know, from from lack of water, but we're trying to encourage it to get out. So like you today, we've had both garage doors open the door, the window, like everything open that we can keep the dog away, you know, keep keep him inside the house and just hope it'll see the light, you know, and follow the cuz they will they look for the light to get their way up. I just think it's just too young to like, know what to do.
E: Aren't there bird catching devices? I know they have them for other animals. Yeah, put some food in the box. They go into the box, the box closes, you take the animal in the box out and off.
S: I said we haven't gotten to the point yet where we're asking for professional help. We're just trying to encourage you to leave.
J: Steve, why don't you put a little bit of food, like outside?
S: We did that.
J: No.
S: OK, we have a trail. We So these these birds really love oranges. I mean, we see, I'm sure I've seen this bird on my deck eating, you know, oranges. And so we have like a trail of of half, half oranges leading outside and it's just not biting.
E: Oh boy. And it you're saying it's young.
S: It's it's a baby, Yeah. A fledgling, yeah.
E: So under normal circumstances, Steve, would the bird be taking cues from its parents or would this be an independent bird by now?
S: No, we still see it mostly with its parents.
E: So where are its parents?
S: Don't know. Probably just the other side of the house. They might not. Just don't know where it is.
E: I mean, but does that send the parents into, you know, I don't know, a state of, you know, or they just think, oh, our baby bird left. We're gone. We're good.
C: There are some. I wonder if it's right at that age, though. There's some fledgling like mourning Dubs that we get each season right outside of my house, and they're on their own. But they're so stupid. Yeah, They'll just like sit right in the open, like right in, you know, full predation zone and be like, duh, and stare at you. And then you get you get within like an inch before they fly away. And then they like hit the side of the building or, you know, they like have a hard time landing and you're like, oh God, you left too early. You are not ready for prime time.
S: Exactly. No, we could see like these birds, you know these particular birds, the red bellied woodpeckers, you know, we could see the family. They like the come to the to the feeders at the same time and they're at the point where they're eating on their own, but they'll also be fed by the mother, you know, like they're they're literally being weaned.
B: Yeah, show me one last time. I was. Yeah, yeah.
S: Yeah, they they do that then they sort of puff up and flap their wings and open their mouth and like feed me, feed me and the mother like will feed them a little bit, but it's like, but now you got to do it on your own and suddenly then they will eat on their own as well. So they're just right at that point. So it just doesn't, I guess, have the experience to know how to navigate the situation and it's clearly panicked. You know what I mean? Like it's desperately trying to fly up and out and just cannot calm down long enough to see that the light is down.
E: Is it? Is it pecking on the wood in the oh so you can hear it going? Through the eaves.
S: It's running back and forth along like the eaves on the inside. Oh.
E: Boy and.
S: Then we won't see it for a couple hours like that to get out. But Nope, it's just hiding, you know what I mean? It's just because there's places it can hide that we can't see.
E: It's a hybrid.
S: Yeah, I'll keep you appraised. That happens to. All right, well, let's move on with the Regular Show.
Dumbest Word of the Week (05:51)
Orthomolecular None
S: Evan, you're going to start us off with the dumbest word of the week.
E: Yes, thank you, Steve. This is the dumbest word of the week. My second go at it and I hope you enjoy this word. I found it entertaining. I'm going to get to the word, but I'm going to do some other words to get to the word. The first word I'm going to use is Wimbledon. Do you know what Wimbledon is?
S: Town in the.
E: Tennis tournament. A suburb of London. Yeah. Tournament. Tennis tournament. Right, Right. The oldest tennis tournament in the world.
S: Grass courts.
E: Grass courts. Yep, Yep. One of the one of the four tournaments that is considered part of the Grand Slam of tennis. Like very high, the highest crowning achievement for any pro tennis player. And that brings us to the tennis player Novak Djokovic, who we've spoken about, I know I've spoken about many times before on the show. I bring him up because Wimbledon is happening this week. Djokovic is again in the tournament. I believe he was played today and won. He's going to go on to the final. 8 is where it stands. So by the time you hear this, who knows what will have happened. However, in his career he has won this tournament 7 times. What and He has won Grand Slam tournaments, a total of 24 of them 24 Grand Slam wins. He has and.
S: How many grand slams?
E: Does he have tournaments?
S: So technically now a Grand Slam is winning all four in a row.
E: Does not have to be not on the IT.
S: Used to be, yeah. It had to be the same calendar year, and then at some point in the 80s or something they changed it over to. If it's four in a row, that'll count.
E: 6 but I could I could be wrong. I'm not getting.
B: That sounds a bit high, but I haven't.
E: Been it is No, it is, it is high, but you have to understand this is like it was one of the all time great tennis players. He's also one of the all time great crank, you know, cranky athletes as far as medicine, pseudoscience beliefs, anti vax and all that stuff goes. So I bring it up. A couple years ago, he he became buddies with this person named Chervin Jafari. You've probably not heard of that name before. Used to be a real estate agent and a hedge fund dealer. But he turned into a Wellness guru, a Wellness expert, a supplement vendor targeting brain health, immunity and detoxification, and a lifelong seeker of truth and knowledge in quotes. Yeah. So he's kind of a guru in that sense. So the two of them hooked up a few years ago and became buddy, buddy and did some live streaming. And he has a podcast and joke of his spun on his podcast. So they kind of hang out together, you know, birds of a feather. So Chervin, let's see, has a website. It's called Symbiotica Cy MB IOTIKA, huh? So let me read. And if you go to his website, it's about, you know, you go to the about section. I always do that when I go to websites. I want to know what the website is about. I'm delving into and here's what it and here's how it reads. Jervin is a pioneering force in advanced Wellness, blending cutting edge approaches from functional medicine, epigenetics and ortho molecular science. Ortho molecular science. There's our word ortho molecular now ortho molecular. So it's what?
C: Molecules of bones.
E: A molecule no ortho means a couple different things. It could mean straight upright right or correct orthogonal. Yeah, in the sense orthogonal isn't is is used. But ortho means in this in this context right or correct? And molecular obviously comes from the non noun molecule which means extremely minute particle from the Latin molecular tiny mass ortho molecular. Who came up with the word ortho molecular? Do you know Linus Pauling Bang? Steve, you got. You got it. Definition ortho molecular relate an adjective relating to based on using or being a theory according to which disease may be cured by providing the optimum amounts of substances such as vitamins normally present in the body. Linus Pauling, 2 Time Nobel Laureate, Credit with coining the term ortho molecular medicine and defining its core principles. He introduced the concept in his 1968 Ortho Molecular Psychiatry article in Science magazine. Pauling's vision was to restore and maintain health by using the right amounts of substances naturally found in the body. And among the things that he was talking about was high dose vitamin C as a potential treatment for what?
S: Cancer.
E: Cancer. Oh boy, line is cancer. How the mighty mighty have.
S: Not just high doses, but really he was the first proponent of mega doses, like super high doses. You know, he going beyond treating vitamin insufficiency, of vitamin deficiency. This is we're getting the whole ortholecular concept. It's not like you had you just not just making sure you don't have a deficiency. If you have this magical amount, you know, in the body, the body them functions super normally, you know, and you could do things like treat cancer just by having the these high levels of vitamins in your body. Pure pseudoscience. Just absolutely pure pseudoscience.
E: That's right. And it's not just dismissed. Oh, that sounds crazy or that shouldn't work. Pseudoscience. It's been studied. In fact, it's been studied extensively. And the trials have found no consistent benefit. In fact, harm has come from it. Right? Yeah.
S: It's been 60 years, it's not like we don't have any idea. It's complete nonsense.
E: It's complete nonsense, yet it persists still, obviously, because we have, you know, health health gurus like like Jafari here, who's hanging out with Yovan Djokovic, helping him and whatever his crazy, crazy pursuits are when it comes to medicine and health. And being that this is the week of Wimbledon, therefore our dumbest word of the week is ortho molecular. And now you know a little bit more about it. But thank you Steve.
S: By the way, drug of achieved the Grand Slam 3 * 3 the only only man to achieve the triple Grand Slam.
News Items
Ban Left Turns (12:06)
- Here’s a way to save lives, curb traffic jams and make commutes faster and easier − ban left turns at intersections [1]
S: Cara, do you have this one crazy trick for getting rid of traffic jams?
C: Apparently apparently there's one crazy trick that would actually help. Make commutes faster, easier, lower our emissions. What do you guys think? It is Not you, Steve. Anyone else? If there was one thing we could change about traffic. Incident cars well.
B: There's a couple of them but no left turn is 1 and then the traffic circles the other one that I'd like.
C: Yeah. And so it's interesting. So I'm going to talk about both of those, Bob. So no left turns is the solution put forward by I'm, I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, Doctor Vikash Gaya. He is a professor, an associate professor of civil engineering at Penn State, and he is a big proponent of banning left turns. He does talk about traffic circles quite a bit in his publications and cites a few different journal articles where traffic circles or what they call roundabouts were described. His opinion is that although that can sort of solve the problem, it's actually not as effective as just banning left turns altogether.
US#05: Yeah.
C: So let's talk about that left turns, OK, if you are are listening to this podcast in a country that was at some point colonized by Britain, you probably don't drive on the same side of the road as us here in the United States. So we may be talking about right turns in your country, but we're going to have to all kind of adjust to this left turn vernacular because that's, you know what this this news article is about the US So obviously in the US, we would drive on the right side of the road. When you turn right, you're merging into the traffic that's flowing in the same direction as you. When you turn left, you're merging into a traffic that's flowing in the opposite direction, and you're crossing oncoming traffic. Does that make sense to everybody? That's the main reason that it's really unsafe. So we'll talk about safety first. You have to cross oncoming traffic. And if you do crash your car at this stage because you either miscalculate how long it's going to take for you to get across before a car comes or because another car shows up before you saw it, or because you hit a pedestrian, which would be terrible, but it can't happen. The car to car crash is called an angle crash. I've learned so much here and reading about angle crashes from the US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration taught me that they are some of the most dangerous crashes that you can be involved in. They can be fatal. They're often fatal. OK, let's talk about statistics here. This is a little bit hard to understand, but intersections make up almost half of all crashes. So 40% of all crashes here in the US at least, occur at an intersection within that 40 percent, 50% of those, So that would be 20% of all crashes involve a serious injury, 20% of those, 40%. Somebody help me with that math?
S: 8%.
C: Thank you. 8% of those involve A fatality. So again, when we look at the 40% of crashes at intersections, we can further break it down as well. 61% of those 40% involve a left hand turn. And if you look at, I don't have the numbers on this, but if you look at all of the different ways that one can go through an intersection and you actually look at the number of cars going through any intersection at any given moment, the the frequency or the percentage of that being left turning cars is quite low, right? There are way more people going straight through an intersection or turning right than there are turning left. Unless it's a very particularly left hand heavy intersection. Most intersections, the vast majority of cars are not left turning cars. But it accounts for 61% of crashes at intersections. So well over half that tells you that it's that it's quite dangerous, but it's not just dangerous, it's also inefficient. And obviously it's inefficient for a lot of different reasons. You have to wait for oncoming traffic to give you a break. If you're at A at a solid green light, if you have a green arrow, sometimes you're luckier because you know that you can go across safely. But that actually they call this a specific phase of traffic where all of the lights are red. Otherwise that's called all red time and it doesn't serve many vehicles and it it makes intersections, it's like one of the top reasons that intersections are lower in efficiency here in California. I don't know if you guys have spent a lot of time in California, but I can say in LA especially for some reason, maybe it's because the infrastructure is older. It is an older city. Maybe I don't know. I don't know what was going on with our civil engineers, but left turn arrows are exceedingly rare here. They just don't really happen. There's I can, I can kind of see a few intersections with them in my head. Most intersections don't have them. And many intersections in LA don't even have left turn lanes. And so now you're talking about breaking the flow of most of the forward momentum traffic. There's kind of an unspoken rule here. This is just a hint for anybody who drives in LA so that people think you're a local and they don't get mad at you and honk at you is that you pull out. You don't wait behind the line if you're going to turn left, you pull into the intersection. And as the light turns to yellow so long because nobody's speeding through, you have to check, you start going and then it's two to three cars into the red. That's just how it works in LA. That's how everybody does it. If you wait until you're fully in the clear, you're never going to get across. And so these are, you know, just just that, just knowing that, think about how inefficient that is. So what does this researcher recommend? Doctor Gaia, he says, especially in downtown areas of of cities. And he cites a few different cities where this is happening, like San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Birmingham, AL Left turns are either being banned altogether or they're being restricted in off during peak periods. Do you guys have any of those restrictions where you live where there's like certain traffic rules at certain times of day?
E: Not a lot in. Connecticut in the country like this. No.
S: Parking. We've got parking.
C: Yeah, we've got parking too, for like street cleaning and stuff. But in LA one of the things you see a lot are signs that say anti gridlock zone. Yes, new.
E: York City has those.
C: Yeah, I'm thinking of Melrose's a good example. Melrose is not a very wide St. It's mostly 2 lanes on either side, but the outside lane is a parking lane for most of the day and so really it takes it down to 1 lane. But between I'm guessing here I'm probably wrong on these numbers. Let's say 7:00 to 9:00 AM and then 4:00 to 7:00 PM. It's anti gridlock zone. You cannot park. You'll get a ticket. The meters don't run, you'll get towed because they need to widen the street for all the traffic that comes through it.
E: I just got a kick out of how you just casually said Melrose. As if.
C: Yeah, it's a. Very moment, yeah.
E: It's a very LA, a very LA thing.
C: It's funny living in a city where people are used to references because they see it on TV. So it's like that bar.
US#07: It's like that skit on Sorry Night Live.
C: The Californians.
US#07: Oh gosh, that's hilarious.
C: It's so sad because that is our lives. It's like, I think, how'd you get here tonight? Well, I took the 101. Why did you take the 101? You should. Have taken the. What do you think? The 118, what a kick. I feel like we're also one of the only places in the country where we say the before the street name. You guys don't do that, do you?
E: Like what we say the Boston post Rd. maybe?
C: But but what about a number?
E: No, I.
C: Don't like growing up in Texas? You would take 35 or 75. You wouldn't take the 35.
S: Oh yeah, we don't say the.
C: Number we say yeah, but in California we all say that the 110, the one, the 1:14 I know and that's how you can just tell when somebody's from here that's weird so OK what about roundabouts as you mentioned Well, Doctor Gaia says obviously roundabouts are safer because you never cross opposing traffic in a roundabout and for those of us in the US who go. Every time we approach a roundabout because they're really uncommon here, they actually are really smart and safe. You just have to know that you're the one yielding. Just remember that when you enter around, you yield. Other people don't yield to you and then you'll be fine. Wait until you can get in, go in and then exit. But don't wait to exit, just exit. That's how it works. And so in and in like every country that I've visited in the world, people use roundabouts and then they come to the US and they're like, what is your four way stop situation deal? This is so frustrating. Yeah. What's interesting is that roundabouts aren't always more efficient, especially in situations where there's a lot of traffic, because roundabouts can fill up and when they're completely full, yeah, then there's gridlock again.
E: Well, it's circle lock actually.
C: Yeah, I've. Never seen it round. Lock, You're right, I've never seen it either. But then again, I've never seen a roundabout in a really busy part of town. And also, I think part of the problem with roundabouts here in the US versus other countries where they were built that way from the beginning is, is the retrofitting problem. They're bigger than a four way intersection by definition. The circle is larger, takes up more space. Yeah, you might have to lose lanes or you may have to lose buildings even, or tear down sidewalks. And that's just not going to cut it in places where there's not enough physical space to build it. And as Doctor Gaia says, putting up a sign that says no left turns or no left turns during peak periods is a lot cheaper. That's a lot faster and easier just to ban left turns in certain areas at certain times of day. And then here's the last thing that kind of surprised me. Most people would say, hey, but if I can't turn left, that means I have to turn right three times, right, in order to go the same place, I have to completely circle the block. But if you are calculating for no left turns in your GPS, you're likely not going to be doing a bunch of full block circles. Your GPS is going to calculate a shorter route where you're not turning that many times, so, but calculations show like this has been studied statistically in a in a typical downtown in the United States, you will drive one extra block on average if you avoid left turns.
B: It's that bad.
C: Yeah, it's really not that bad. And here's something interesting that I didn't realize. Even though you might be driving longer, you spend less fuel, 10 to 15% less per trick.
B: Because you're not stopping and. Idle.
C: Yeah, you're not stopping and going as.
S: Much is that already AGPS option that give me a route with no left turns?
C: I don't think so. I think it's something that I, I, I know you can do no tolls. I know you can do. Actually, I'm going to look at both of mine right now do.
E: You guys, I remember the Mythbusters episode where they tested this and it turned out that it is confirmed right? You know avoiding left turns is the most efficient way of driving or left turns add the most inefficiencies.
C: Yeah, yes. So on Apple Maps for me I can only avoid tolls or highways.
S: They should add that.
C: They should, yeah, why not? Especially if you're doing like local driving as you mentioned. I heard you quietly mention Bob. I think it's since like 2017, maybe even earlier. But wow. In the early 70s, they started using what they called loop dispatch, where they planned routes in a right turning loop to avoid left turns. And then in the 2000s, they implemented a new system which minimized them. So they may make them if they absolutely have to, but generally speaking their routes are planned so they just don't make left turns and it's much more efficient and safer.
US#05: Millions of gallons of fuel.
C: Yeah. So why don't we all do that? Why don't we design our cities for that?
US#05: Yeah, yeah.
C: Let's get on it, people. Let's get on it.
S: There's one place that I am personally familiar with where I drive that has a no left turn sign. It's out of the garage where I work, where I used to work.
US#07: Used to work.
S: Yeah, I used to work. And because there's a very the way it is, if you're waiting for somebody who's try to make a left hand turn, it'll really block traffic. So they just say don't make a left hand turn. People always do it anyway. I'm always behind some Jackass making a left hand turn with the signs right there and we're waiting because you're not supposed to do this.
C: Yeah, it's it's like my Trader Joe's has a no left turn. The place where I work as well, the hospital has a no left turn sign for that same reason, because people in the parking structure would be waiting for ages. It's better for me to go left out of both of those places. But what do I do? I turn right and then if there is a nice big break in traffic, I just pull AU turn. That's fine. Or I go right, right, right. And even though it does add a little bit to my trip, I'm moving at least right. At least I'm driving. And I'm not just sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting because we've all been there. We've all been behind somebody trying to turn left out of like a parking structure or out of a parking lot. And eventually they're like, and they get in the right lane and they turn right anyway. And they're like, ah dude.
S: I also hate the double lights. Basically, people who are backed up from one light are blocking the previous light.
E: Yes, I.
S: Know or you have a light right after an intersection, so people stop at the light or they go into the intersection before they're positive they can get through it. And so it's constantly blocking traffic. It's just really bad design.
C: It's bad design, but it's also, I think bad civic engagement when people just ignore no left turn signs or do not block intersection signs. But.
E: The fact that they don't correct it, or don't correct it fast enough. They let it go like that for years, sometimes without putting something else in IS. Mind boggling.
C: Yeah. And I think for a lot of people, their view especially, I mean, obviously we know bureaucracy moves very slowly, but like, if it's not broken, don't fix it, I think is often a view or other things are more broken and we have to put money into fixing them first. But we do see situations where community members raise a fuss. They document, they do their due diligence and they go to the city and they say, look, look at these accidents. Look at what's happening outside of my home. Look at this problem. Yeah, your your government is not going to do anything unless they hear from you that you want it done. Doesn't mean they're still to do it, but that's always a good start.
S: All right, thanks, Cara.
Bird Flu Shenanigans (26:21)
- RFK's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry could set us up for a pandemic, experts warn [2]
S: Jay, what's going on with the bird flu?
J: Oh God, Steve. Oh boy. Well first of all, it's no longer something we can ignore. Let me just tell you guys a horrifying statistic. In birds and many mammals, H5 N 1 is close to 100% fatal and and in humans, depending on the strain, the case fatality rate ranges from 30 to 60%. So this is a really, really bad, bad, bad, bad virus that we do not want. But but we're not here to tell you that. I'm here to tell you guys something completely different. First off, what do you guys think we should be doing about this virus from a government perspective?
C: All the things you can.
E: Gaming of vaccines to help.
C: Prevent vaccines, culling out, culling animals when we know that there's a serious outbreak, Quarantining outreach.
E: Public outreach More information.
J: And Bob, you don't care.
B: No, you got the left turn thing. Yeah, I. Mean research, throw money at research mRNA all that all that crap man, just.
J: Well, I'm going to tell you soon what the experts say we should do. But okay, even more interesting, I'm going to tell you what RFK has planned, and there's a spoiler here. It's biologically inco freaking inherent. What this guy?
US#07: Wants not homeop. Is it homeopathy? I mean, might as well be right.
J: But this all reminds me the situation that we're in. If you remember, back in 2020, a group of scientists signed something called the Great Barrington Declaration. You guys remember this? Yes, this was a, you know, a misguided document that argued that we should let COVID-19 spread through the general population and that we would build like this herd immunity while somehow protecting after millions all the vulnerable people, which is, you know, children and and old people are people that had pre-existing conditions. You know, it was condemned by nearly every freaking reputable medical institution on earth. The Who called it unethical. Fauci said it was nonsense. And you know, they were both right, basically. So now here we are, 2025.
S: Jay, you left out that science based medicine round. They criticized it as well.
J: I should have led with that, Steve, I'm sorry.
S: Most important.
J: And who was the author on that paper?
S: David Gorsky, actually. Wrote those articles.
J: He's that guy is so freaking awesome. So now it's 2025. The H5 N 1 bird flu is teetering on something much, much, much larger. So what does our secretary of Health and Human Services suggest? Not only him, but he and the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, They're floating this idea of letting the H5 N one in quotes RIP through poultry farms. And their idea is that the birds who are naturally immune could be identified and then they can be used to breed stronger resistant animals. The animals will be.
S: The rays are slaughtered.
J: We bred and slaughtered the problem with this idea, right? Because this is like what, you know, a 5 year old can come up with this, let the animals get sick. The ones that survive, we breed them and we make a super strong chicken, right? The problem is there's zero science to back any of these comments up at all. And he's also argued that natural infection creates more durable immunity than vaccines. And in one case, and in one case, he even said that he'd move these infected ostriches from Canada to his colleagues Florida ranch to further study it. Like, you know, not like a scientific study. Just let's see what happens when we move these birds down in this ranch. You know, like, hello, you can't just do that. And the problem is this is the worst idea of all time, what they're proposing. First, commercial poultry doesn't breed on site, right? The chickens that are there that they're going to eventually use for whatever it is they're going to use them for, they don't breed. Their chickens raised for meat and eggs come from the centralized breeding lines that are not in the places where the the farming happens, right? The birds on farms don't pass on traits because they don't reproduce. And he doesn't know this. So even if some do survive the H5 N 1, which is very unlikely since the virus kills like pretty much 100% of the infected chickens, there is no heritable immunity happening in in his scheme at all under any circumstance.
C: And even if there were like 5 chickens that were super resistant to that bird flu, and even if we could breed them, how many people are not going to have access to that protein source for how long? Oh exactly Like we're talking about just no chicken for like 3. Years. No chickens.
J: I mean, you know, you thought egg prices were crazy. You know, you know, it's going to be a million times worse than that.
C: The entire global like food system would be affected by. That but the biggest.
J: The biggest problem here though, you know, I totally agree with you, Cara. And that's an issue because we have to talk about it because that's a whole protein source. You know, it's a huge part of the protein source in the United States, probably globally, but definitely in the United States. But but there's something even more pressing than that. This isn't a virus that you want circulating the H5 N one. It already infects dozens of mammal species, right? It's out there, including dairy cows. It's made occasional jumps into humans so far, the human to human spread of court, you know, thank Christ it hasn't happened yet. But letting the virus persist in these high density, you know, poultry operations all over the country just gives it more chance to mutate, right? More shots on goal means more goals. At any given time, there are about 9.5 billion chickens in the United States, 9.5 billion right now. Imagine all the chances that the virus would have to freaking mutate if if all of them got the virus. Just think about that. It would be. It would be like this. It would be.
E: A cosmic.
J: Right, Evan, this is the way that you would do it if you want it to go bad.
S: This is essentially what he's saying is let the chickens evolve resistance to the virus. But if you're going to enter into an evolution arms race between a virus and poultry, the virus is going to win.
E: Virus.
C: Is evolved.
S: That's much quicker.
C: That's why we always talk about antibiotic resistant bacteria and different types of resistances in fungus and in viruses. We don't talk about, you know, measles resistant people. That's only from vaccines. We can't evolve.
S: Can go extinct from a bad pandemic.
C: And it's not just chickens, it's like all these other birds. What about the other birds? That's a good point.
E: And we're not talking about just.
J: Chickens and they're firing on multiple cylinders here because a couple factors are very important. The longer that the virus circulates and mutates and the higher the number of of, you know, animals that are out there that are doing it directly relates to the odds that it involve evolves to infect humans. So this to me is like, it's this goddamn surefire way to have it evolve. So humans get it and then what? Because the fatality rate right now is 30 to 60%. That could get worse with mutations. Doesn't mean it's going to get better with mutations.
S: Yeah, and of course, the increasing infections means more exposure to infected animals from farm workers and other animals.
C: Yeah. So it is going to get worse. Even if it were to get better in the future, which we have no evidence to support that it would, more people will die. You.
J: Guys, remember Vassini from The Princess Bride? Yeah, I'm just getting started. I have more to tell you guys. The CDC laid off around 1300 staff, including these field epidemiologists and the lab leadership fellows. These were the frontline responders for outbreaks. They're gone. The USD as National Animal Health Laboratory Network. This was central to bird flu detection. They lost 1/4 of their staff and their staff started at 14 people. Just so you know, state and local public health programs lost funding due to an $11 billion rollback in covert related support. Global early warning systems like WHO said predict these were shut down or completely defunded. Federal Communications around outbreaks became erratic, and weekly reports were paused and local agencies were left completely in the dark. And that's just my summary of all the things that I read because it was an entire page worth of things that were going on that got into more details. This was just like the highlights, which is, you know, unbelievable. All right, so now let's get down to reality so everybody understands what the experts are saying. And that's the experts you got. You got a couple of hits there, care. One of them was immediate culling of the infected flocks, right? But this isn't, you know, brain surgery. This is.
C: No, we've been doing this forever.
J: We know what to do Expand.
C: Every other country in the world does it.
J: We need expanded surveillance for the, you know, for the evolution of the virus. We need improved farm bio security. We need rapid response outbreak teams. What? But they're gone. Accelerated poultry vaccine development and financial aid for farmers that will incentivize the true reporting and you know, not like it discourages them from covering it up by saying, hey, it's perfectly OK, we'll give you financial support. And again, this is the the highlight list. This isn't the complete list of all the things, but like these are the things that we've learned, you know how to handle situations like this and they work and it's as simple as that. So, you know, what we have is we have someone who is clearly anti vaccine and anti, you know, anti science for the most part, who with one decision could put the entire country at risk, like serious risk.
S: Well, let's also remember, Jay, that the this is also coming from the Secretary of Agriculture, who's Brooke Rollins, who is also an anti scientist. So she's a climate change denier. She really has no experience in the last 30 years in agriculture. She has like a bachelor in agriculture from in 1994. Other than that, she's basically just been working in right wing think tanks, not dealing with agriculture policy and she's a climate change denier, right? So she's basically, it was picked because, you know, of her politics, not because of her qualifications or topic expertise. So which guys is, you know, the recipe for a disaster? That's a position that should be somebody who, you know, lives and breathes agriculture, right? Who understands that specific topic and who respects science. We put science before politics. We have the opposite. So between the two of them, yeah. I'm not, I don't have much faith in any good decision making. So, all right, we'll see what happens over the next few years. But this is a, this is, I think the bird flu is the most likely next pandemic that we're going to see.
C: Absolutely, and it'll be some horrible mutant version.
S: You could get blindsided by something else. It could happen. The crossover virus. Can the rest of the world say? No.
C: No, I mean they can prevent it from being a worldwide pandemic I guess. Is it still a pandemic if it's all of America?
S: It's an epidemic.
C: No, it's still just an epidemic, even if it's millions.
S: Yeah, I think by definition.
C: You have multiple countries. Where the one country, yeah. So I mean, the world could potentially, I mean, but that's really hard to do if you have something just exploding in a country like ours where there's so much global trade, where there's so many people coming and going. It's not an isolated epidemic in a country that's less connected, you know what I mean?
E: Yeah. It's just, you know, I hope some other countries come up with some vaccinations and some other solutions at least to make it not totally cataclysmic.
C: Yeah. I mean, then they are departmentalized in spite of us.
E: Yeah, in spite of us, right, Right. We have to rely on other countries now to maybe save the day.
S: I wouldn't count on that.
E: I know, I know it's.
C: It's so sad, I know.
S: Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our ad this week, Quince.
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J: Yeah, Cara, I actually bought my wife some jewelry from Quince for Mother's Day. I got an awesome deal on it, like they had a awesome sale going on. These are the gold diamond U-shaped Huggy loops. You ever see these? They're very high quality. You know, Quints just has a lot of good products across the board. I personally own quite a number of items of clothes from theirs as well, like they really, really like, Cara said. It's very high quality.
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S: All right, guys, let's get back to the show.
Interstellar Comet (39:54)
S: All right, Bob, tell us about this Interstellar comment.
E: Oh.
B: Did you guys know our solar system is being invaded?
E: Yes, I did know that and I welcome our new invasions.
B: Thank. You. That's the third. This is the third interstellar object flying through our solar system since 2017. It It has been spotted and confirmed by should. Make left turns. No left turns. It's been spotted and confirmed by astronomers and it's name is Atlas. Have you guys heard about this?
E: Oh yes, it's all over, all over the news.
B: You know, scientists have theorized for decades, literally, that that these rocky and icy objects from other stellar systems should be passing through our solar system. And now it's basically now we have the technology to start really seeing these. And you could tell this is the third one in, what, in eight years? The first one I'm sure everyone listening to the show is heard about because we've talked about it multiple times in in multiple different contexts. This is the. Omua mua, right, Omua mua. Yeah. And so this was, this was the first confirmed interstellar object within our own environs. It travelled the inner solar system way back in autumn 2017. Not immensely huge, I mean 377 feet, 115 meters long, but it was travelling 16, almost 16 1/2 miles per second, 26 kilometers per second. Relative to the sun's motion, that's pretty speedy. A More and more. It was observed as it was leaving. So that makes it different than the other guys there because so there's not a lot of data that can absolutely confirm, you know, the nature of that object. So and part of that's why we saw some, so many crazy theories like Avi Loeb saying that it was a spaceship. Oh my God, You know, it didn't look like a comet, but it did out gas like 1. And that made its trajectory very complicated. And both of those actually contributed to some of these outlandish hypothesis that we were seeing. All right, so that's Omoa. The second one I didn't really hear that much about in 2019. This was the second interstellar object. Borisov appeared in August 2019. This was also the first observed rogue comet, which I was not aware of. It was discovered by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov. How cool would it be to have your name attached to an interstellar object like this? That would be so cool. Borisov was a kilometer long, and it did actually look like a normal comet. It had a coma, it had a tail, but it just was not from anywhere around us initially. OK, now the third object, this is Atlas. Technically, it's three I Atlas. What do you think the three I stands for? It's the third Interstellar. So that's the naming convention here. Let's see which first spotted. Geez. Today's the 7th. 6 days ago, July 1st, 2025 by the Deep Random Survey Remote Telescope in Chile. This telescope is part of the Atlas project. This is the Atlas in this context stands for the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System, which is a global network of four telescopes. So Cara, the comet is called Atlas, right? And it was discovered by a project called Atlas. So is this some sort of astronomical nomenclature? Nepotism. Only asking. Questions here. It's like coincidence. But you know, I like to think that the the discovery of the true nature of Atlas and similar objects starts with a scientist somewhere saying hmm, and then that would evolve eventually into. Whoa. Because that I think that's, that describes that, that the process. So that's because of something called a hyperbolic orbit. And Atlas has a whopper of a hyperbolic orbit. Hyperbolic orbit in this case means that it's just, it's unbound. It doesn't even sound like an orbit to me because it's unbound. It's not gravitationally bound to an object like like the sun. So it may get close to the sun, but it's never going to come back. It's it's just, it's not bound like a planet is, right? A planet has an elliptical orbit, not a hyperbolic orbit. Elliptical orbits just don't have the energy to, you know, a planet in an elliptical orbit just doesn't have the energy to leave and it comes back, you know, it's, it's periodic. These, these hyperbolic orbits that these interstellar objects have are, are not anything like an elliptic orbit. They just like, they're just like going out into Infinity. So, so that means that once they calculated Atlas velocity and trajectory, then they could see that, Oh yeah, this thing is going to approach the sun and then it's just going to fly out out of, entirely out of the solar system and it's never going to come back. And that's when that's that epiphany moment, moment when you're like, oh, whoa man. This is an interstellar object. Whoever was the person or people that were there when they did those calculations, they must have been like, holy crap, we found #3 So that must have been very exciting. So how are these guys created? I, I came across two major ways that we think that these are created. The first one is involves a gas giant. Imagine a gas giant in some solar system pulling in an asteroid, say, and the tidal forces of the from the immense gravity and proximity of that of that gas giant just kind of RIP the asteroid to shreds. And then they're just kind of accelerated it towards the gas giant and then accelerated out at really high velocity. So they think that's one way some of these objects can get sent to other solar systems. The other option is is something is? What do I have in my notes here? Have moon fling. What did I mean? Moon fling? OK.
E: That means that's a different podcast.
B: Moon that means that you've got colliding, you've have colliding planets essentially like like the early universe, what they called it, the great bombardment area era when yeah, you've got planets colliding all over the place and the the energies involved there are of course, immense. And they could fling chunks of these asteroids out into out of the solar system and into other solar systems eventually. Oh yeah, I see. I see the connection here now. So that means that some aliens could be looking right now at small chunks of the Earth caused when it collided with another planet billions of years ago and created the moon. So that that event where the Earth collided with Thea that formed the moon could have potentially, we don't know, we'll never know, but could have potentially accelerated a chunk of Earth or Thyra out of the solar system and is now interacting with some other solar, some other star light years away. So that's an interesting idea.
E: Does Atlas pose a threat, Bob?
B: This is good. It's not. There is no threat and don't be. So don't be afraid. Don't don't be afraid. It's only going to get it's only going to get about two AUS from the Sun at its closest and that's this December 19th. So.
E: It's about 180 million miles, right?
B: Yeah, so it's so it's never it's not going to it can't even get possibly close to Earth if it's only if it's never going to get closer than two AUS. But this is actually better news than you might imagine, because I found I read that an impact of Atlas on the Earth would be about 100 times worse than the Chicxulub Dino Killer 65 million. Years 100 a hundred times. Worse.
E: That's just like, that's a world killer.
B: That's yeah, that's the hell, Bob. Beyond devastating.
J: Yeah, Bob, is this thing even going to be visible?
B: Oh, it's going to be visible, but just not not to the naked IJ. You're going to need some beefy instruments to see Atlas or you're going to, you can be an amateur astronomer with some good equipment because the equipment is just getting so good, even for even for amateurs. But what I can't wait for is from some of the big boys or big girls to take a look at Atlas, including specifically the telescope I talked about not too long ago, the Vera Rubin telescope. That instrument is actually, you know, that's part of its mandate. You know, that's something that is absolutely expected. The Vera Rubin telescope can find many objects like this over its lifetime. In fact, I saw 2020 paper that estimates seven of these interstellar objects could enter our solar system every year, 7 every year. So we may get the technology up to the point where we're seeing we're detecting one of these every few months potentially. I mean, if they're super tiny, that would be extremely difficult even for really advanced hardware to check it out. But we could be seeing, you know, multiple detections every year before too long. And that's fascinating. The other the other angle here is, oh, the physicals, a physical sample. That's what I find most intriguing. I see a lot of people asking online what are the chances of getting a physical sample? And it would be amazing. And you know, we've seen some amazing, right, some amazing geology in the museums that we visited over the years, right guys, you know, holding a moon rock or rock that's built millions of years old or or Mars rock, It's really cool. But imagine if you had it in your hands another a rock, a piece of rock from another solar system. That would be just beyond the pale, right? Not beyond the pale that that expression doesn't work. That would be beyond the beyond. That would be fantastic, right? The bottom line though, is that Atlas is just too is wickedly fast. It was something like 26 miles a second. This is a lot bigger than any of the other ones. This one's it's bigger and brighter. And because of that, we could potentially learn a lot more from Atlas than we could have from a MUA, MUA and Borisov. Let's say, yes, 68 kilometers per second. This thing is going so fast. And that's one of the reasons why this, this hyperbolic orbit is far more powerful than the other interstellar objects we found. The other interstellar objects, a MUA, MUA and Borisov were just barely hyperbolic. If one is not hyperbolic, they were like 2 and 3 or 4, whatever this one is like is think had a had a eccentricity of like a six. So this was extremely hyperbolic. This there was no way this thing was going to stay in this solar system. Yeah, it's just going, Alice is going too fast right now for a rendezvous. Let's see, I had a quote from somebody. Yeah, Professor Martin Bartstow at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester. He said we need a spacecraft ready to do it in space, fully checked out with a rendezvous capability. And we obviously do not have anything like that. It would need to be there right now. And in fact, the European Space Agency, ESA is working on a comet interceptor project and I think they're going to launch that, I think around 2029. But even that might not be enough to catch these guys. They're just generally going way too fast because they're at they're hyperbolic. They're going to be going very fast right out of the gate. So we're, so we might not be able to catch them for a while until we, you know, until we step up some of the technology and to be able to do that and have something ready to go. So there's not a lot more detail here. I mean, as I said, we discovered this about a week ago. There's not too many more details that I could find, but I'm really excited to see what we can learn from these things. I mean, they think about it, they represent a direct physical connection to other solar systems and they're and they're coming right to us. We don't even have to leave. And that's pretty convenient because if you, if you read our book Skeptics Guide to the Future, you know that going outgoing, travelling out light years away physically to interact with these things, it's just like, it's just basically not going to happen. It's just way too much energy, way too much time. If we do it, it probably wouldn't be even for for centuries. So they're coming right to us. And I'd love to see what we can learn from them, learn about the origins of our of our solar system and and other exoplanetary systems that we already have a lot of information about through our telescopes. So yeah, definitely going to keep an eye on this on this guy and see what we can learn from him or her before they leave the solar system.
S: Yeah, that thing, if that thing hit the Earth, that we would be toast, right? That would be an extinction level event. It's like like a bullet.
B: Can you imagine 100 times? I can't even imagine. I mean, it wouldn't be like like Thea, but it would be basically, yeah. It would be extinction level event beyond probably anything.
S: Yeah. Let me ask you guys a question.
Artificial Blood (51:55)
S: How much blood do you think is used every year in terms of units of blood? Units of blood that are donated in order to be used transfused into people.
C: Is a unit 1 bag.
S: It's one bag. Yeah.
J: Steve, does this include vampire activity?
S: Not including vampires, Okay.
C: You mean in the world or in the US? World.
J: I mean, come on. Well, how the hell a?
C: Billion. So how many units? It's in the building. It's gotta be the 20 billion.
E: It's gotta be.
S: It's one of those numbers it's too big for you to wrap your head around. It's 118 million million, 118 million units. I died, that's all.
C: I said it.
E: I said 100.
C: It's less than I thought.
E: Bob, I didn't hear that. Check the tape.
S: Bob said 100 million the.
E: Recording.
S: Bob wins. So. But here's the problem. It's a lot of blood. Yeah, it only lasts for a certain amount of time. And so you need a constant supply of basically blood donations from people, right? And that's there's no one figure for how much of A shortfall we have. But, but shortages are basically constant. Like we never really have enough and it's as you might imagine, it's far worse in less developed countries. A disproportionate amount of that donated blood is donated in high income countries. Even though it's a lot, it's, it's an overall shortfall and there's a mismatch between supply and demand. So it would be awesome if we could have an artificial supply of blood, right?
E: Impossible.
S: Imagine if we could manufacture blood, we would have several advantages. We wouldn't need constant donations, right? We wouldn't have to worry about.
E: Blood type exact. Vampires would be.
B: All set.
S: Yep, Yep, vampires.
B: Murder. No murder involved. How cool is?
S: That we wouldn't have to worry about getting infections through transfusions, right, right. So it could be a huge advantage. The problem is it's really hard to do. Blood is a very particular fluid that's highly evolved, obviously for its purpose. And it's just hard to mass produce, right, Because we make a little bit of it doesn't really help if we need to make hundreds of millions of units of artificial blood per year.
B: We just get some water, some red food coloring, some sugar, I mean. What else? So what else you What's the big?
S: What is the big feature of blood that we need to replicate?
J: Plasma.
C: What does the blood do?
S: What does the blood do? That's like trans blood cells food.
J: And oxygen to your body, yeah.
C: It needs to have like heme.
S: Yeah, it's the oxygen that's the trouble. Just carrying other stuff is just water can do that. Plasma can do that, right? But it has evolved to be very good at carrying both oxygen and carbon dioxide, right? Carries oxygen from your lungs to your tissues and carbon dioxide from your tissues to be excreted in your or lungs that's a critical part of its function and you know the molecule that does that right is is hemoglobin yeah, hemoglobin, so that's the trick right and there's basically 3 approaches different approaches to try to mass produce a blood replacer one I'm not going to talk much about is just coming up with another chemical other than hemoglobin that binds oxygen, you know and could, you know basically a liquid that you could put into the blood that.
C: Or like that you could make like, I know, OK, this is going to sound kind of silly, but I did a bunch of research back when Impossible Burger came on the scene because I had to do coverage for a lot of, yeah, TV shows. So they use something called leg hemoglobin, which comes from plants. Well, actually, which comes from yeast. They genetically engineer yeast, and then they take the leg hemoglobin from that genetically engineered yeast. That's what they put in the mixture so that it like quote, bleeds and tastes right.
S: Yeah, but you can't just put hemoglobin in plasma. That doesn't work. So the other two approaches are way ways of getting the hemoglobin in a functional state in the plasma. One, which is being pioneered by a Japanese company, is essentially you make a lipid nanoparticle, right? When you guys remember those? Yeah, like a bi lipid little bubble and then you would attach hemoglobin to the outside of it, right?
E: Can you imagine that?
S: So it's just a bunch of hemoglobin attached to the outside of a lipid bubble, and that's your fake red blood cell. So the advantage there is it's just pure hemoglobin on the outside. There's no other protein, so there's no blood type. You have hemoglobin. So it works just as well as regular hemoglobin. Downsides are does not last as long as blood lasts for days. Blood cells last about 120 days, but still, if you're in a hospital after trauma or getting surgery and you're having catastrophic blood loss, you know, this could buy you time to get through the acute phase. You know, so that's still in development. It sort of works in proof of concept, but it's not. They need to figure out how to mass produce it and they need to make it a little bit. It can still provoke some immune response. So they need to deal with that. They need to stabilize it better so it lasts longer. So that's still a work in progress, but that's one approach. Then there's the third approach, which is the subject of the news item for this week, is basically making artificial red blood cells, right? If we could, why can't we could mass produce cells, right? You just get stem cells.
B: Yeah, we can build them. We're.
S: Going to make artifact, we're going to make lab grown meats, right. We're going to make lab grown red blood cells.
US#05: Yeah.
S: What's the limiting factor there that good? It's just the technology of really it's the mass production part. That's the that's the bugbear there. So the original kind of approach to this was to get bone marrow stem cells like blood stem cells and to culture them and to produce the red blood cells through them. But there that's really slow and laborious and is never going to be scalable to the point where it's going to have an impact on the blood supply. More recent attempts. So as stem cell technology progressed, you know, we got to the point where we could take skin cells, fibroblasts, whatever, and then turn them into stem cells and then make them turn into the kind of cells that we want. So with that kind of more updated stem cell technology, that opened the door to mass producing red blood cells through stem cells. But this technology is tricky too. And there's one particular piece of it that they've had a difficult time with, and that is so you know what's different about red blood cells than most other cells in the body? No nucleus have no nucleus. They have a nucleus when they're being formed, but there's stem cells that make them have a nucleus. At some point, the nucleus is ejected from the cell.
B: That's why they look. Squished in the middle.
S: Exactly. They have that little squished in the middle shape.
B: What? Becomes of the nucleus just weight weight.
S: Broken down and recycled, when we are growing red blood cells from these modified stem cells, only about 40% of the time does the nucleus get ejected from the cell. So that makes the whole process very inefficient. Then, of course, you'd have to find some way of separating those from the other cells. Here's the the somewhat of a breakthrough is that scientists have found a way to improve that one step of the process, getting the red blood cells to extrude their nucleus. What they found was they identified a signal, the CXCR 4 signaling protein, that promotes what they call terminal erythroblast differentiation and a nucleation. So basically it triggers that last step in the blood stem cell to differentiate into a red blood cell and to eject the nucleus. So this opens the door to essentially adding this either genetically modifying the stem cells so that it does what we needed to do, or adding this to the culture or whatever. We have to figure out now how to exploit this piece of information. To So then the study, they found that they could increase the excretion rate from 40% to 80%, which of course is a lot better. So it makes mass production of artificial red blood cells way more likely, more viable as a technology. We're not there yet, but it's a big step on the way in that direction. Yeah, yeah. It's just the interesting technology. Like you think at this day and age we can't make artificial blood. You know it, it seems like we should be able to do that, but it's actually really tricky. And again, the the key limiting factor being we have to be able to not only do it, we have to be able to make hundreds of millions of units a year. Otherwise it's utility is is limited. So.
C: Do we have other artificial blood products? Did I miss that like the other components like plasma?
S: Yeah, we can make plasma, but it's not as good as real plasma though, because the plasma, the real plasma, has the proteins in it, like the albumin.
C: But that seems like it's something we could, yeah. Like it's just an eggs speaking. We gotta worry. It's all the immunogenicity it's got to be. Yeah, exactly the reaction.
S: Got to be human. Yeah. Albumin.
B: Hemoglobin is, it's a protein. It's not a protein. I mean, and we could build proteins from scratch. Amino acid by amino acid we can build them I guess. That's just ridiculously slow process to even.
S: And yeah, it's not just that, Bob, because you just having the hemoglobin isn't enough because you can't just inject hemoglobin into the blood. It's got to be.
B: I know, but I mean that's what that's a critical component as you say.
S: Yeah, but so you know where we get the hemoglobin right now if you just want to get just naked hemoglobin, cows, pigs, yeast, No, no, they get it from.
E: Amazon Expired Amazon.
S: Expired blood donations.
E: Oh, they can extract.
S: It yeah. So if a blood, if a unit of blood that's been donated is just aged out, it's too old to give to somebody, they could then use that. So it's human blood, they can use it to get the hemoglobin out of so they can get an actual human hemoglobin. But then you can.
B: There's enough of it, enough expires.
S: Not really. That's the thing. So not enough of it. And you still have to then attach it to that lot, that lipid nanoparticle, you know what I mean? And then stabilize it and do other things to it so that it actually functions. Because otherwise, if you just inject hemoglobin into the blood, it'll just get broken down in 2-3 days. You know what I mean? The proteins don't survive long. Proteins are constantly being turned over, right? So they need to be stabilized.
E: Yeah.
S: Anyway, it's an interestingly difficult technology, but we are making good progress and is the kind of thing where we may cross the line to a viable product in the next 10 years or so, something like that. And it could be have a huge impact on medicine, you know, just to be able to crank out and then get rid of all these open transfusion reactions, all the infectious disease that gets gets transmitted through blood donations. Don't you don't have to constantly be having blood donation campaigns and constantly just trying to make up for a shortfall of blood. It'd be really transformational.
B: What about typing is that is like where they just by default being like an O universal donor?
S: For the hemoglobin, there's no type that's an advantage. For the red blood cells, it is a type. But The thing is you can manufacture rare blood types, right? So that's that's another advantage there.
C: Well, you could also manufacture. I mean, I hope we get to this point where you just take somebody's blood If if the issue is just that they need more, not that they need their blood to be different. Yeah, that you can just take somebody's blood and make more of it.
S: Well, you could take somebody's skin cells, turn them into stem cells and make blood from their own cells. You could do that theoretically. Yeah.
Beekeeping Benefits (1:03:24)
S: All right, right, guys, let's move on. Evan, tell us about the wonderful benefits of beekeeping.
E: I will, and it's also a local Science News item because this article talks about New Haven, CT Yeah, this one was written up over at ZME Science, a very good science website for interesting Science News. The author is Ben Seal. He writes about. Yeah, beekeeping. Tucked away in the shaded corner of a community garden in New Haven, CT, a beehive awaits. It's called the Honeybee Project, a nonprofit that offers youth beekeeping training in a therapeutic context focused primarily on those with experience in the foster care system. They've been around since 2018 and they have graduated 11 cohorts from its 15 week program, which helps teens develop job skills and build community with humans and insects alike while tending to a hive. This is neat. The founder, the founder and board member, her name is Sarah Taylor. She's a licensed clinical social worker with a background in child and family therapy. She says that the process helps the young beekeepers navigate and heal from the depression, anxiety and trauma many of them have experienced during their often turbulent childhoods. The interconnectedness of the bee seems to strike a chord, she says. OK, so as keeping a beehive A legitimate form of therapy, I mean, is it good for a person's psychological health on the surface? Just just thinking about that alone without go digging into it at all, you would think, yeah, you know, you give somebody a project, you know, it gives them a a focal point, something to to focus their attention on. This one happens to be outdoors. You know, you're not in front of a screen. So yeah, that should be good. You're tending to animals almost in the form of a pet in a way. You're you're caring for it, you're interacting with it, you're helping it out. Hopefully you're not getting stung in the process. Make sure you're not allergic before taking up the practice. Now, the only way to know if you're allergic to a bee sting is to get stung by AB. Is that right, Steve? There's I don't know that there's a test to see if you are if a person is allergic.
S: They can always expose you to. Yeah, so there is, there is, but.
E: It's a bee sting, yeah.
S: OK, that's how all allergy tests work. All the real ones, you know give you.
E: Just a small, very small minute dose of.
S: Whatever you do, give a little intradermal, you know dose of the thing and you see if you get a reaction.
E: Got it. Well, at least that aside, you know, this seems to touch on some of the broader aspects of therapy that should do more good than harm. At least that's what it seems. The article suggests that there's been a very long standing set of anecdotal evidence that beekeeping can help people who are dealing with mental health issues. One example has to do with the actual buzz, the noise generated by the bees. They say it can help people address issues such as dislocation and disconnection. Where dislocation refers to a state of being displaced from one's usual context, leading to feelings of loss of identity and a sense of not belonging, disconnection refers to a state of feeling separated or alienated from oneself, others, or one's environment. Here's another example they give. There is an Army veteran who turned scientist. He published some early research showing reductions in anxiety and depression and improvements in overall health among military veterans engaged in beekeeping as a recreational therapy. The title of the study was called Healing Hives, exploring the effects of beekeeping on veteran mental health and quality of life. Here's a little piece from the abstract. Veterans experience higher risks of suicide and mental health disorders due to traumas of military service disabilities and the difficulties of reassimilation into civilian life. Therapeutic interventions using human animal interactions have shown promising results in reducing many risk factors affecting veterans quality of life. This quality improvement project sought to consider if veterans participating in a recreational therapy program focused on beekeeping and administered by the Department of Veteran Affairs would experience quality of life improvements using a standardized EQ5D5L assessment. Our results indicate significant changes in the mobility, anxiety, depression, and overall health for veterans participating in beekeeping as a recreational therapy. OK, there's another study found a positive effect on stress and well-being among college students who took part in beekeeping. This one was titled Beekeeping as a Therapeutic Modality to address Stress and Increase well-being for undergraduate students. Also from the abstract, the purpose of this study was to develop a pilot program to explore the impact and therapeutic potential of beekeeping as a modality to reduce stress, improve mental well-being, and increase nature connectedness among undergraduate students. Evidence from the participant interviews indicates that experiences with beekeeping activities and education engendered an overall beneficial impact. So patients perceive stress, nature, connectedness, and well-being. OK, back to the veterans for the moment, here was a more robust evidenced based study. His name is Adam Engrao pH who has a PhD in Entomology. Former veteran as well has shared his experience with over 15,000 veterans who have taken part in something called Heroes to Hives, which is a nine month program that combines beekeeping education and training with mindfulness and therapeutic practices. Well, they describe it as the first evidence based findings on beekeeping's benefits for veterans in therapeutic in the journal called Therapeutic Recreation Journal. The research documented the beneficial effects on mental health of a program run at the VA by a recreational therapist, including reductions in feelings of anxiety and depression, as well as increases in positive feelings regarding overall health. And there, and there are others. So I guess you know, and there the efforts here are to what quantify and measure these effects of beekeeping as a therapy, but trying to do it more in an evidence based way rather than just relying on, you know, anecdotes and, and and other stories of the past. I mean, hopefully there will be more science based studies in the future as a result of these early efforts, but I don't know that can we conclude anything at this point.
S: Now, these are basically pilot studies. They're not really isolating beekeeping as a separate variable, you know what I mean? And right, it could be any kind of animal control. Therapy, it's like you combine it with these three other things that people say they feel better. That's kind of the level of evidence that we have at this point.
C: I struggle with my opinions on these kinds of things, like these kinds of studies make me roll my eyes a little bit. I don't know. You guys are going to hate what I'm about.
E: To I mean, but how do you know it's the beekeeping part of it that.
C: Is that's what I'm saying. I don't, but I also don't know if everything has to be sliced and diced. So scientifically, when I'm working with a patient and they're struggling and they engage activities that help them build community and feel responsible for something and it improves their their mental health, you know, self reported mental health. OK, then do that thing, right. That thing is healthy for you. It is psychologically healthy for you is not causing harm. You're engaging in in something that is, you know, contributing to your, your positive mental health. Like, there's just so many variables. Yeah, there are gonna be some people who aren't helped by beekeeping because they're like, I don't like bees.
S: Yeah, I I agree with you, Cara, totally. Where I have a problem is why, when somebody then takes it to the next level and creates like the Beekeeping Therapy Institute, you know, where they claim some kind of magical benefit from bees and they, you know what I mean?
C: Yeah, it's like it's not the bees, it's all the other ingredients here. And that's why it's important to understand the difference between the actual ingredients that have an effect and all of this stuff in between. Yeah. And my guess would be if we could, and you can't always do this with complex behaviors, but if we could tease out all the different variables, we'd be talking about exactly what you mentioned at the beginning, Evan. Feeling responsible for something, Creating something with your own two hands, Engaging in nature, engaging with other organisms.
E: Not being a free screen, Yep, that's generally.
C: Good, not holding up in your house.
E: Yeah, getting out, fresh air, all that good stuff.
C: But it's the same thing if you're riding a horse and, you know, getting a horse and changing a.
E: Walking dogs, Volunteering to walk dogs or.
C: Something, and that's fine if you want to call that, I guess, animal assisted therapy, but it's no different than just going to a farm and hanging out with animals.
S: Or art therapy where you're drawing pictures to get the same effect. Right, It's nothing. It's just don't confuse the nonspecific effects except with something very super specific.
C: You know, we know that socialization is important for mental health. We know that feeling like you are in control of something. We know that caring for something, feeling responsible for the outcome of something, is deeply important for mental health.
S: And if it's a hook or a gimmick, that's fine just to get just.
C: Don't charge 10 times as much for it because all of a sudden it's therapy.
S: With something magical or specific, yeah.
C: Exactly.
E: Yeah, and don't start making the leap that oh all of a sudden be venom therapy is going to be good as a result of this as well, right. You can. You can start, you can start going in different. Directions.
S: These are psychic. All right. Thanks, Evan.
E: Thanks.
Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:13:00)
S: Jay, it's who's that noisy time?
J: All right guys, last week I played this noisy. That's strange, huh, Sound?
S: Like there was a bird in the background. Is that important to the noise or now?
J: If there are birds in the background, what does that tell you?
S: In nature, OK.
E: Or it's or. It's in Steve's, Yes, Thank you.
S: Steve's Garage and.
E: Steve's Garage.
S: But that wasn't the sound of a red bellied woodpecker.
J: No it.
E: Wasn't because you used the app to tell you that.
S: That's right.
E: Got it.
J: So listener named Joe Lanandrea wrote in said hello Jay. This week's noisy immediately reminded me flapping dragonfly wings. So combined with the background sounds that are perfectly consistent with the with this, I'm going to make this my guess. It is not the flapping of dragonfly wings, but but thank you for sending that in. Shane Hilliard wrote. It's a woodpecker fighting something, some hive of bugs or or a nest of rattlesnakes. That is also incorrect, David Klepper IK wrote in said. Hey guys, we're finishing up our two week long road trip while we listen to the podcast. Our family guessed that this week's noisy is a box of bugs that are complaining loudly when someone bangs on it, and that's actually got some truth in it. They hit on a couple of things there, so we have a winner. The winner was Hack on Lund and Hakan said hi. What you're hearing is someone banging their fists on the surface of a termite mound, resulting in the termites making their warning sound by banging their heads on their surrounding surface. So this is actually a whole bunch of termites that are inside some piece of wood. You'll hear someone tap on the wood with their hand and then you'll hear like that rattling noise, and that's the termites banging their heads against the wood. Listen. Crazy.
C: Hence.
J: That's a lot of termites.
C: Well, have you ever seen one of those mounds in nature they're in? Yeah, they're huge.
J: I think these were soldier termites, and that's like a a noise defense mechanism essentially. So don't mess with those guys because they'll bang their heads like crazy.
E: Jay, if you want to extract them, what you do is you take a stick, OK, And you poke it into the mound and pull it out, and then you can eat them.
J: Eat. Them.
E: Yeah, just.
S: Like a, Like a. Lollipop.
J: That was my plan, so Shane Hillier actually wrote in a guest this week. And Shane Hillier sent me a very cool noise this week, so I'm going to play you the sound right now. Does that sound familiar to any of you?
E: Not to me.
S: I mean, it's a spinning up sound. I don't know specifically.
J: Well, this is definitely. Something and it's very cool. And if you think you know what it is or you heard something cool this week, you can e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Steve, we have a show in Kansas on September 20th. It's going to be a a really good time. We're all really looking forward to it because we haven't we haven't seen Cara in a while.
C: Yeah, it's been too long.
E: And we've never been to Kansas before. Well, not as the SGU.
J: Yeah, so we're going to be doing 2 shows. We're going to be doing our private, you know, SGU recording, which means that you'll be sitting there watching us record an episode and, you know, there is audience interaction. You know, these shows are a lot of fun because we kind of go off the rails and we let it all hang out. Right, Bob?
B: Oh yeah, always hanging.
J: And then and then that night, we're going to be doing our stage show. This is called a skeptical extravaganza. Aganza. Aganja, Steve.
E: Different.
S: Extravaganza.
J: It's the Aganza, right? Okay, the Aganza of special significance. And you know, how do we describe this show? Well, first of all, we basically during this show so show you how you cannot trust your senses and we will absolutely prove to you that you can't trust your brain. Your brain is trying to kill you, or at the very least, your brain is trying to give you a version of reality that is nicely smoothed out and isn't actually that accurate. And many, many times during this show, we do some improv stuff that George is is leading and it's super fun. It's really funny. We get, you know, we really do get a great response. We've been working this show for God Visit 15 years now and it's been refined to the point where every single second of it is just awesomeness. So I hope you go. If you're interested, you can go to theskepticsguide.org website and you can find ticketing information for both of those shows.
C: Jay. Yeah, as long as we've been doing this show, I still always miss title. It a skeptical extravaganza of some significance.
J: Yeah, it's of special significance.
C: Special significance, OK.
J: Which is, it's fine. I mean, you know, if you think about it, you're correct. You're just not at the right magnitude.
C: Yes, exactly.
E: You're conflating what Perry used to say. When he would quote would do the quotes. He would say a skeptic of some note.
C: There you go.
J: Yes.
E: So at some point that you know those two things blended for you.
J: I have an idea, Carrot. We'll leave that up to the audience. They can. Some people might.
C: Think how much significant.
J: Yeah, some people might think special.
S: All right. Thanks, Jay.
Emails (1:18:28)
S: One got one e-mail. I'm not going to say who it's from a moment we're going to paraphrase it because it's from an insider at Verizon. This is a response to my discussion last week of of all the tech difficulty I had in transferring my phone over front to my private account and then updating my phone. And it did seem like the experience that I had was certainly different than my prior experience with tech help. Usually if you get with an actual person, they walk you through the process and everything goes well, right? I don't know if that's the experience you guys have had sometimes with this kind of thing. So the the insight that they what do you think is the thing that may be different recently that might be?
E: With Verizon.
S: Or just in general? That might be frustrating. This tech help experience AIAI that's correct.
E: No.
S: So you know what they said was that there's now it used to be that the tech support would have access to the back end, right? They would know they could do everything themselves, right? So they could walk you through the process, they could troubleshoot it, etcetera. Now essentially AI does that and that's kind of being forced upon them and it was rolled out too quickly and now the the agents themselves don't have the control that they used to have. And also he said that the AI is optimized for upselling of.
C: Course it is.
S: Not you trying to get you to get more services or whatever. Not necessarily, you know, to optimize your experience.
C: Right, because that's why people call tech support, because they want to buy more stuff. Yeah, right.
E: Have you considered upgrading to the blah blah blah?
S: Yeah. So which which, you know, kind of makes sense because it, you know, it was different than my experience in the past. Usually like you go to the the tech genius, you know, those kind of people, they kind of know what they're doing. So he, you know, basically he was saying because that's this is what his job is. And he's like, yeah, this is the problem is they're forcing this these, you know, AI honest that is premature. It's not really working well. You know, it's, and this is causing all sorts of problems like getting error codes that nobody knows how to interpret, like nobody understands how it works. So, and I do think this is a problem that goes beyond AI. And the problem in general is that again, as we were saying, if you're trying to move very quickly, constantly turn over new versions of things and it's very easy to, you know, it's the whole move fast break things kind of approach. I think the, I think the companies themselves are kind of overwhelmed with their own technology. They don't really understand it. That doesn't really work very well. And, and it shows, you know, my fear is that this is going to become the norm. It's kind of like the difference between calling a helpline and talking to a person and calling a helpline and getting an AI assistant. You guys have all had that experience. Right.
C: Of course, yeah. Or like oftentimes you. I mean, I like it when there's a choice, right? You go on a website, you have a simple question. It's like, here's the chat bot, ask it the question. And if they can't figure it out for you, then here's the number you call.
S: Exactly. If it's simple, if it's like the thing I just need to know the hours or whatever, it's something really simple, then it could be handled with a chat bot or an AI assistant or whatever. That's fine. But they do need to make it easy to get to a person. If it's something that's more complicated, and I get it, it costs money to have people crewing lines and you need to, you know, this is a money saving feature.
C: But that should be calculated into the cost of the technology that we are paying for.
S: Yeah, right. Because it's when a mediocre option becomes, maybe it's good enough, you know, becomes available, then that's, you know, but it's cheaper, you know, it's cheap and mediocre. That's what we're going to get. And it just kind of sucks, you know?
C: It does. And like, it's one thing if you're buying a piece of hardware, a piece of tech that has a certain shelf life. It's another thing if you're buying a service, when you're buying a technological service, it needs to work, and if it doesn't work, that should be factored into the cost of the service is fixing it.
S: Yeah, but in a, you know, capitalist system, the customer service does count for something. You know, you can, you know, customers do have some power to vote with their dollars, to vote with, you know what they use. But we have to demand it. So I think the biggest problem is if we become complacent with mediocre service and we don't think we deserve or don't demand better.
C: And I think that sort of. I don't wanna call it an idealized view, but that view only works if we're in a true capitalist system where there is choice. But when you're talking about, oh I have a choice between 4 multinational corporations who all own each other and are different subsidies of each other and have like similar kind of levels, then that it's sort of an illusion of choice.
S: Well, that's why we're supposed to have trust busting, right? We're supposed to not supposed.
C: To Yeah.
S: But that has to be functional itself, which it sort of is, and it's never perfect, but it's not non existent either. It's somewhere in the middle and it can. And that sort of fluctuates from administration to administration to, but that's why it's so critical. You need without competition, the whole system fails, right? Because then there's no there is. No incentive to. Do better. I always use the DMV as my example. Be like, with no choice and no incentive whatever, everything's the DMV. Not that they don't get their job done, but you know what I mean? That's sort of the classic example of a horrible customer service experience.
E: Right. Yeah, it's poster child. You want to call it that?
C: But I will say the DMV does get everything done and in a relatively.
S: It has got that.
E: It's got over my life. It has. And some of it's now online, you can renew your license online. You don't have to go, right. So there are some things that is finally doing that. Yes. So it's better than when I was younger.
S: Yeah, 20-30 years ago, you walk into the DMV, there's that massive line and you're like, Oh my God.
E: Worse than going to the dentist, I'd rather have a tooth. Pulled.
S: Yeah, it was bad. All right, let's go on with science or fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:24:54)
Theme: None
Item #1: MIT scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%.[6]
Item #2: Researchers have published a clinical trial of an anti-rejection treatment that allowed 95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs, and 75% to remain off for greater than 2 years.[7]
Item #3: A new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth.[8]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | A new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. |
| Science | MIT scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%. |
| Science | Researchers have published a clinical trial of an anti-rejection treatment that allowed 95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs, and 75% to remain off for greater than 2 years. |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | win |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Evan | MIT scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%. |
Bob | A new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. |
Cara | A new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. |
Jay | A new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. |
E: It's time for science or fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or a fax 2 real and one fake and then I challenge my panelist skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We got three regular news items this week. Are you guys ready? Yes Sir, here we go. Item number one, MIT scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%. Item number 2 researchers have published A clinical trial of an anti rejection treatment that allowed 95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs and to 75% to remain off for greater than two years. And I number 3A new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. Evan, go first.
E: Number one, scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%. I, I don't see a problem with this, but I, it's one of those things where, Oh my gosh, you really should be, you know, don't I'm crazy. That's a huge number in this regard, but I don't know. But it doesn't seem like a problem just on its surface. The second one about this published research, a clinical trial of an anti rejection treatment, 95% of kidney transplant. That's big. OK. That I that I do know 95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs, 75% to remain off for greater than two years. That seems very, very impressive. I don't know if I can ask this question. Is this based on it already being like pre matched in a sense like? So these were just you've. Already you've already qualified done as much matching as you possibly can.
S: Since you're going first like this is, this is also a dense item, so I'll give you some background. So these are just people who've already had their kidney transplants, right? The kidney transplants came from living related donors all.
E: Right, that's very impressive. I have a feeling that science and that ones very cool. This last one is about space ice lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. I I suppose that could be, you know, a lot of things going on on the earth that just don't happen other parts of the universe. So why wouldn't this crystallization be different? It could be different, it would be different. Well, I guess based on just my ignorance alone I have to go with the forced mutation one, maybe as the fiction, just because I really don't have a good way of quantifying that one, where the other ones at least I have some idea what's going on.
B: OK, Bob, for this first one here, forced mutation and photosynthetic enzyme by 25%. Yeah, that seems nice. I know that there's there's various enzymes related to photosynthesis. So it's not like and you do say it's key, but I think there's more than one key enzyme here. So just one having one changed by this amount isn't necessarily like a Nobel Prize moment necessarily. So I'm just going to use that that little tidbit of information to maybe think that that's science. The rejection, the yeah, 95% kidney transplant. And you did say that it was a family member and this is just a clinical trial. I mean, that would be wonderful if this translates through, you know, to, you know, just everyday use, that'd be fantastic. If these stats didn't change that much, that'd be great. So I could potentially see that more so than I could see this third one with this different type of entirely amorphous ice. Yeah. What's getting me is that it's lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. Well, you do say typical ice. Fuck yeah. That kind of kills it because I mean, I. Would I? Well, I. Would have thought that we would we would have noticed this. I mean, it's not like we, we can't reproduce, you know, the environment of space, whatever key attributes they're keying in on here, whether it's, you know, whether it's vacuum or temperature or maybe maybe I'm just space ice is a thing that I'm just not familiar with what the attributes are here in terms of what they're, you know, what their environment is. Ah, man, I don't know. This is a good one. I mean, I'll just go with the amorphous ISIS fiction. OK.
C: The one that I would know the least about is the amorphous ice one. Can I? You may not be able to answer at this point, but does space ice mean any ice that's not on Earth?
S: It's formed.
C: It's gonna be on Mars.
S: No, no, it can't be on Mars. It can't be. It has to be formed in deep in space, not on a planet.
C: Okay, okay. And so it sounds like Evan was saying that we've long thought that space ice is amorphous and this is reinforcing that. I don't know anything. So amorphous meaning that it's right like a missing, like random. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not ordered. Yeah, it's on random. So the one that bugs me, I guess in that one is that it says entirely like anytime it's like completely, 100%. I don't know about that. But the other two are both amazing. If this is true, increasing the efficiency of an and I do like that Bob pointed out, so thank you for that, of a key photosynthetic enzyme, not all photosynthetic enzymes, but by 25% either way, that's incredible. I wonder how much it increases the efficiency of photosynthesis. Probably not 25%, but that's incredible and really important. And then a published clinical trial, I don't know if that's a so that would be a phase. It was phase three. Just phase three. OK, Yeah, because I was going to say it just says recipients. It doesn't say if they're animals. No, they're human. So they are people.
S: It's a human phase three clinical trial.
C: Yeah, that's amazing. OK, So this means that like these folks did it, they did it. This is probably going to be the the norm now. And if that's the case, that's credible. And so I think out of hope, I want this one to be science. So I'll go with Bob and say maybe space ice is not entirely but somewhat amorphous.
J: OK. And J, you know, my question about the amorphous ice thing is, you know, if there's liquid water or you know, some form of water in space and it's not ice and it's going to turn into ice, then there had to be a reason why it wasn't ice, some type of heat source or whatever, right? You follow me.
S: Oh yeah.
J: So, so that means that there would be temperature variations enough for there to be some type of water and then and then it then there's ice forming from from some of that water. I mean, I know this sounds kind of obvious, but like it felt like it needed to be said, Steve. So therefore how could all the ice BA morphus if if there's different if water is in different states in outer space for some reason or another at certain times or not, right?
C: Is that a big assumption?
J: Bob.
C: That there's such a thing as space water.
US#05: You want. To know I can't say anything to you.
J: Well, I mean, it just makes sense because if at some point, right, I don't know, is this, this is like it's one of those things that I'll just be up tonight freaking thinking about it. Like I can't figure this out.
E: 92 lbs.
J: But I mean, you know, I mean when, when I agree with Bob and Cara, I how could I not go with them, you know?
US#01: Because Evan, I think statistically, is the one who gets it when he's on his own the most.
E: I don't recall it, but I occasionally nail it that way.
J: I was. I would have gone with Evan, but before we started recording this show, Evan just flatly said to me, I don't know shit. So. No, he didn't say that.
E: No, we.
J: Yeah, I'm going to go with the ice, Steve. I mean, I you know, the thing that Cara said that makes a lot of sense to me is like, all ice. Like all of it. No, come on, It can't be.
S: OK. So you guys all agree on the second one, so we'll start there, OK. Researchers have published A clinical trial of an anti rejection treatment that allowed 95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs and 75% to remain off for greater than two years. You all think this is science.
E: Wonderful science.
S: This one is science.
E: This is cool.
S: So, yeah, this is a phase three human clinical trial. There were 30 people in the trial, 20 in the treatment group, 10 in the control group, which which was just usual care. You know, they got their immunosuppressive treatment, whatever they needed. So what do you guys think the treatment is?
C: Some sort of OK anti rejection treatment. I I think it's similar to what we might have been talking about before where it's like their own cells did something CRISPR. Yeah, like, like, like targeted genetic engineering.
E: Nano something.
S: So these are people who already had their kidney transplants, right? So you can't do anything with the with the transplant itself. It's already in them, right?
B: It's it's from a family.
C: But but maybe their own their own immune systems were changed.
S: Yes. How were they changed?
C: Oh, to not attack certain types of your antigens.
S: Dancing right up to it.
E: They delivered something to the immune system to make sure it didn't reject.
B: No, that it didn't recognize the didn't recognize something in the kidney.
S: So.
B: Modified bubble boy scenario.
E: Oh, was it the lipids?
S: System what they did was they gave them a bone marrow transplant from the same person who gave them the kidney.
C: Oh wow, they're they're immune. Cells it basically. Gave that's just me.
S: They gave the donors, they gave them the donor's immune system, basically. That's really.
B: What's the? Downside to that?
S: Well, you have to get a bone marrow transplant. So they have to go through a process where they they use low grade radiation to wipe out their bone marrow and then they give them bone marrow from the same person who donated the kidney. That way, you know, they're making immune cells that have the same characteristics as the kidney itself, so they don't reject it and so they.
C: We already do this for certain types of blood cancers.
S: Yeah, but yeah, but this was doing this tandem, like you got the kidney from this guy, now you're getting the bone marrow from this guy.
C: But that's so smart. It's like, it's not like this is old technology or it's not like this is brand new technology. It's like new applications. Yeah, yeah, it's so smart.
S: Yeah. And, and yeah, so 95% of the 20 people, you know, so that's 19 we're able to come all the way off their immunosuppressive drugs and 15 of them were able to remain off for greater than two years, which is huge, you know, because the immunosuppressive, like the lifelong immunosuppressive drugs, that's the big downside to transplants.
C: For sure. And I think a lot of people would be willing to go through some short term. I mean, it's, it's probably painful what they went through, but some short term pain for that, like lifetime gain.
S: Yeah.
B: But what their immune system like? Slowly drift and kind of reset to to their.
S: It depends on how thoroughly they wiped out their immune system to begin with. But yeah, but it did last for more than two years, you know, in most of the patients. Let's go back to #1 MIT scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%. Evan, you think this is the fiction? Everyone else thinks this one is science and this one is science. This is also science.
B: Yeah, baby, this is very cool.
S: There's a lot of research looking into how to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis, but this one is great. So they used, you know, they used treatments to increase the mutation rate in order to basically create more raw material. And then they. First of all, what do you think the enzyme was? Guys, know anything about photosynthesis?
C: Yeah, but sure, like complex like.
S: Yeah, it is complex. This is the. We've talked about it before, which is the only reason why I ask. This is the.
B: One and a 2. Something with those.
S: Two, this is the Rubisco enzyme, RUBISCO. So this is the step where carbon, carbon is taken from carbon dioxide and incorporated into the sugar molecule, right? So photosynthesis uses light energy, right, to make ATP and then it uses that energy in order to incorporate, you know, take in carbon dioxide, take the carbon and build a backbone of a sugar. That's how it makes its own food from the sunlight. That step of incorporating the carbon into the sugar is the rate limiting step. That's key. So while yes, there are more enzymes, this is by far the slowest step. It's massively rate limiting. So any improvement in this step improves the whole process by basically that same amount because the other steps are not rate limiting. Does that make sense? That process, the Rubisco enzyme, catalyzes the first reaction in this process called carboxylation. Carboxylation is taking the carbon from the CO2 and adding it to the ribulose biphosphate, which is the sugar backbone, the sugar. But the other reactions happen as well. It's also possible that oxygen will combine with the ribulose instead of carbon dioxide, and that is a huge waste because it's it's not making the sugar, but it's using up energy produced by photosynthesis, right?
C: Oh interesting, so did they change it so it can't bind to oxygen?
S: Yes, that was the whole goal. The whole goal was to reduce the percentage of reactions that are to oxygen instead of carbon. And so they did that.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:39:03)
"That the scientific literature contains errors, and that attempts to replicate the findings of published studies frequently fail, is surprising to many who are new to science. However, failures to replicate and challenges to the published literature are common in all branches of science."
– Gregory McCarthy, professor of Psychology, Yale University, (description of author)
S: So they, they took the enzyme from a bacteria that typically lives in a low oxygen environment and then they, they used quote UN quote directed evolution, right? So they speed up the random mutations. And then they bred it in a high oxygen environment so that it would, it would basically introduce a selective pressure to make it tolerant to oxygen, meaning it doesn't react their, you know, Rubisco enzyme does not catalyze or you know, so it's a mutation to that enzyme so that it does not react with oxygen.
C: Oxygen and it doesn't affect its its rest respiratory ability, right? It doesn't, like, mess up that side of the function of the plant.
S: Well, this is bacteria, but now.
C: Oh. Yeah, in bacteria, OK.
S: So does that make sense? So this way, so now you have a an enzyme that has a higher percentage of reacting with carbon, a lower percentage that reacting with oxygen, and that increases the efficiency of the whole process because you're not wasting photosynthetic energy. On this side reaction, that's not what you're what you're trying to accomplish.
C: That's great.
S: Yeah.
C: How did they say? I mean, I know that your wording here says that it increased the efficiency of this key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%. Did they say how much it increases the actual efficiency of photosynthesis?
S: They haven't incorporated into a plant. So if you include, if you include in quote, UN quote photosynthesis, the process of turning sunlight into sugar, it's 25%, right, Because the rate limiting step was increased by 25%. But the I've you're just doing background research for this item. There's multiple other research efforts in this direction that have increased the plant growth by 40 to 60%. So this does translate really well into increased plant growth, you know, increasing the efficiency of this sunlight to sugar basically. So there's, there's other things as well, like, you know, there's basically two kinds of photosynthetic pathways, the C4 and the C3C4 is more efficient than C3. Like corn has C4, but rice and wheat have C3. So they're trying to get wheat with the C4 pathway. So that'll be more efficient, but they're also improving the efficiency of the corn, the C4 pathway. But again, and a lot of that is featured around limiting the oxygen side reaction, right? Because that's a major source of inefficiency in the whole process, but also just speeding up the rate at which it does the reaction because it's only like 10 per second. They said it's really slow and it's the rate limiting steps. They want to increase the rate, decrease the side reaction, increase the overall efficiency and get that more efficient pathway into the plants that don't have it. And there's like multiple research efforts that are all getting pretty close to the finish line here. So we could be seeing, you know, GMO varieties in the next decade. The incorporating, incorporating this. Yeah, that's going to be. That's just a huge direct boost to production, you know.
C: Yeah, I love to like, I love how things are named in the sciences. Rubisco is short for ribulose 15 biphosphate carboxylase oxygenase. Yes, exactly what it does well. Yeah, but I mean if you. Really, if you really look at what it, so it's Ruby, but if you look at what it, I mean, it's in the name. That's so cool.
S: I love it when names are technical like that. Absolutely.
C: It tells you exactly what it does, and then they shorten it and make it kind of roll off the tongue, yeah.
E: Like bodemic boat face.
S: Now, this last item is more interesting than it may at first seen, but let me tell you about it. So a new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth. That is the fiction, but there's interesting pieces here. So first of all, space ice is Cara. You got it right. It's mostly amorphous. OK, so why is that? Why is Why would ice that forms in space be mostly amorphous when ice on Earth crystallizes?
C: Well, is it implied that ice is made from water? Yes, this is implied. Is made from other things. This is water ice. This is water. OK.
B: Yeah, it's interesting. Energy, so the amount of energy involved.
S: Yes, exactly, Bob. So if you're freezing at near 0 temperature, there isn't enough energy for crystals to form, right. So I guess that crystallization process takes a little bit of energy. And if you're close to absolute zero, you don't even have that little bit of energy to form crystals. And so you get just this amorphous structure. So they but they used to think that space ice was entirely amorphous, but the new research finds that it's actually partially crystallized. But the crystals are these nano crystals. They're very tiny. So it's a mixture of amorphous and nanocrystals. That's the new part. We used to think it was entirely amorphous. So that's what made this fiction. So it does have crystals. But what I found interesting was the reason why space ice doesn't have crystals. Like there isn't enough energy for crystals to form, so they.
B: 'D never made ice near absolute zero. Then in lab, in lab work, they've never looked at ice formed at those incredibly, incredibly cold temperatures. I guess not if they would have seen this.
S: Yeah, I guess so. I mean this is partly experimental and partly simulations.
C: Yeah, that sounds really hard to do though, practically right. Like you have to produce a vacuum chamber that is at absolute 0 or close to it, and then somehow without breaching it, introduce water. Because if you have the water already there, it's just going to crystallize as it goes to temperature.
B: Right, Even if it's flash frozen frozen.
C: Well that's what I'm saying. You'd have to either go to temperature immediately. Can you flash freeze to absolute 0?
B: I mean, we've gone down to nano Kelvin. I mean, it probably would be AI mean it's a complicated process to get down to that temperature. Just by itself, but yeah, but to do it instantly.
C: It's going to go through a phase in between where it crystallizes probably.
S: They also it's also hard to to see the nanostructure of the ice. They have to use X-ray diffraction studies, but I guess they're not. They could directly look at it. Yeah, there's.
J: Steve, is what I said for it happening, by the way, about the ice and the heat and all that.
S: Now, yeah, it depends on what the temperature was in the environment where the ice formed, right? Like if you have water in a geyser shooting out of Enceladus, it's shooting out into, you know, very cold space, right?
J: Yeah.
S: As opposed to freezing at just below freezing temperature, you know, on Earth, basically very different environment. All right. So good job, guys.
B: Common ice would be this almost amorphous.
S: Yeah, and, and what's interesting when again, reading this, this is, this should be obvious, but it's fun to think about it. Most of the ice in the universe is space ice.
E: Yeah, sure. Yeah, that makes sense.
S: OK, Evan, give us a quote.
E: You know what you get when you combine space and ice, right? Spice. Spice. Oh God. Here's the quote. That the scientific literature contains errors and that attempts to replicate the findings of published studies frequently fail is surprising to many who are new to science. However, failures to replicate and challenges to the published literature are common in all branches of science. And that was written by Gregory McCarthy, professor of Psychology, Yale University. Steve, you ever had any run insurance with Professor McCarthy? No.
S: I have not.
E: You sure it's a small school?
S: Yeah, thousands of people there. Yeah. That's, that's I I frequently have to remind people of that in the comments. You know, we were like, talking of my blog, for example, when people like, oh, they, you know, they changed this or they discovered that this was wrong, it's like, yeah, that's the normal process of science.
E: Welcome to science.
S: Discovering that things were are wrong and then correcting and I had to I talked about this on TikTok. So it was on like Joe, you know, somebody was on Joe Rogan's say on Joe Rogan's show and they were laughing about the fact that, you know, some of the research that claimed to find dinosaur DNA and that dinosaur DNA was very bird like or, you know, specifically T Rex DNA. And then it turns out that it was chicken DNA and that it could have come from contamination. This is the greasy finger hypothesis, right? Contamination from the researchers themselves, the archaeologists, they would have chicken for lunch, they would get their greasy fingers on to the the material and even a tiny bit of contamination could be amplified, you know, by PCR, etcetera, and, and 'cause that signal. So some can take contamination, whether it's the greasy finger or not is probably the case, but it's like, yeah. And there's a kind of, you know, it's just a clip of them laughing about this. It's like, all right, little perspective here. First of all, the claim of dinosaur DNA was met with immediate, profound skepticism within the scientific community. No one bought it because DNA is not supposed to survive that long. And then it was fairly quickly found to be probable contamination and end of story, you know, But what do you that's just a normal process of science. It was they met with it with skepticism and pretty quickly rooted out that's that's the process of science.
E: That's a part of it. That's a piece of it, folks. I mean, come on, how could it not be?
S: Right. And the replication is so true. Like you know the you can you talk to scientists like until something replicates, it's not real, right? Like you don't take things seriously until it reliably replicates.
E: And that's where every pseudoscience fails.
S: Yeah, that's why even like, like, you know, Cara and I responding to this B study, it's like, OK, you know, until this is a reliably replicatable phenomenon, it's nothing. You know it doesn't mean anything.
C: But also, sometimes it's like, why are we spending so much money on these things that I don't know by definition aren't they don't lend themselves to like randomized controlled trials. Right testability.
E: Right. Falsifiability.
C: Yeah. It's like, by definition, they're not that testable. And then you add to that the fact that the the risk benefit analysis is only, there's only an, an upside. There's no huge risk to being like patient, go do this thing that engages you, right.
S: Yeah.
E: Yeah, like walk every day for exercise.
C: Exactly like a doctor's going to tell you that, right? Like unless you have some sort of horrific injury where walking would be detrimental to your health, no, no physician is going to be like I need to study this more before I determine if walking is going to improve your health.
S: Or, and again, it's like this specific activity is like, you know, claiming that that's especially good for you. Like I'm going to be giving you soccer therapy where you play soccer as a form of physical, you know, therapy. It's like, or you're just doing physical activity and there's nothing specific or magical about soccer, you know, or whatever.
C: And it's, it's just, it's rampant. It's like, it is that like people love to, I mean, that's like EMDR, it's like all of it, right? It's like if you can, if you can trademark something and sell it for more money, people are going to try and tell you that it's like somehow more valuable than other equivalently valuable. Activities.
E: But in defense of the beekeeping thing, it's at least it's nonprofit that's that's running that, particularly one out in New Haven. So we can't say, you know, there's not really a profit motive there behind that.
S: Yeah, again.
E: And even the other ones I'm not, I'm not sure that you know it's.
C: No, but I don't mean there's a direct or something, but what the group is trying to say, and I'm not saying this is nefarious, the group is trying to say this thing that we dedicate our lives to is specifically beneficial for these applications, right, But it's not specifically beneficial. Yeah, it is beneficial and that's great.
E: There could be 1000 different things and this is one of them that is beneficial.
C: Yeah, yes.
S: All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. You're welcome. To Eve and until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
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- ↑ theconversation.com: Here’s a way to save lives, curb traffic jams and make commutes faster and easier − ban left turns at intersections
- ↑ www.livescience.com: RFK's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry could set us up for a pandemic, experts warn
- ↑ science.nasa.gov: NASA Discovers Interstellar Comet Moving Through Solar System - NASA Science
- ↑ www.science.org: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.adt2678
- ↑ www.zmescience.com: Hive Mind: The Surprising Mental Health Benefits of Beekeeping
- ↑ news.mit.edu: MIT chemists boost the efficiency of a key enzyme in photosynthesis
- ↑ www.sciencedirect.com: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1600613525000735
- ↑ phys.org: 'Space ice' is less like water than previously thought