SGU Episode 31

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday February 22nd, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. Joining me tonight are Perry DeAngeles,

P: Yello.

S: And Bob Novella,

B: Hey, Everyone!

S: We have a special guest tonight: Terrence Hines - author of Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. He’ll be joining us in just a few minutes. But first, let’s start with some sceptical news items this past week. A report published in The Register, which is a British newspaper discusses the possibility that wifi area networks basically using radio signals to wirelessly connect computers together – that there is concerns amongst some people that this may be a risk factor for either leukemia or brain tumours.

P: This is like the cell phone nonsense.

S: Exactly.

B: And the power lines.

P: And the power lines, yeh.

S: Right. It’s basically all part of the same basic health scare. Now there is actually. What the article is about is a University in Canada that decided to limit their wifi network on camps so that they wouldn’t be exposing their students to excessive radiation. The name of the university is Lakehead University. He is saying: “All I’m saying is while the jury is out on this one”, this is the president of the university, Fred Gilbert, “I’m not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students.” So, again this as you guys pointed out, this sort of radiation – It’s not really radiation, just electromagnetic fields – concerns have been around singles the early 80s. There were some early reports, in some European studies suggesting that chronic exposure to power lines may be associated with leukemia. But the bottom line is after 20 years of epidemiological studies, all of the concerns have been invalidated. In essence there is is no credible evidence that there is any health risk to chronic exposure to either high power lines or radio waves or in the case wireless computer networks. Sometimes it’s just really hard to convince people about the lack of a health risk – you know what I mean?

P: Who was it? The president of a university?

S: Yeh, the president of Canada’s Lakehead University, Fred Gilbert.

P: I mean, what do you know? This guy’s the president of a university. You got to be held accountable a little bit for heaven’s sake.

S: Doesn’t make him a scientist.

P: I know, I know.

S: The issues you always run into – the logical issues – you run into with these questions. How much evidence for a lack of a health risk is enough to reassure people? Obviously, it’s never 100%. You can never, ever prove zero risk. All you could do theoretically is set statistical limits on how big the risk could be. But it’s zero, that would require an infinite amount of evidence to say that it was zero. The other thing from a logical point is that a lot of people assume that if something is potentially risky in very, very large doses or exposures then it is necessarily a little risky in little doses – and that’s not necessarily true. For most things, there’s a threshold. It’s true for some things, but for most things that are harmful to the body, there’s some threshold of exposure where there’s some biological effect and below that threshold there’s really no measurable biological effect. Still, people are left with this sort of idea that a little bit of exposure that they are getting to a toxin or electromagnetic waves or whatever – if a lot is bad for you, then a little is a little bit bad for you. They’d rather avoid it completely. Part of it stems from an inherent emotional reaction that humans have. Basically, we’re hard wired to avoid anything which seems tainted or noxious/ We’ve evolved emotion to protect from protect us from rotten or tainted food. The idea of being exposed to things which are either unnatural or toxic or whatever makes us feel uncomfortable.

P: You’ve got to have the proper filters and critical thinking skills to go beyond.

S: Right, but that requires an understanding of statistics and science, and how to evaluate evidence.

P: This is what the president of a university should have. I’m not a doctor, and don’t play one on TV – but you got to have common sense.

S: I don’t know who this guy is, maybe he rose up through the humanitarian ranks, not the scientists of academia. He wouldn’t necessarily know the first thing about weighing scientific evidence.

B: Before making a decision like that, look at consulting scientists or the literature and see what it’s all about. I don’t think he did that if he came to that conclusion.

P: I wonder if somebody sold him on this, or if he did this on his own volition. It’d be curious to find out.

S: It doesn’t say. The other item of interest this week: The American Society for the Advancement of Science, a huge organisation for science in this country, had a meeting last week, and during the meeting which included a lot of teachers as well as scientists they had essentially a rally in favour of evolution – support evolution and the teaching of evolution – and against attacks by creationist or intelligent design proponents on evolution. Basically, they took the opportunity at their annual meeting to stand united behind evolutionary theory as legitimate science and take the stand against the evolution deniers in whatever guise they took. Which is very good, I think that was a good thing to do to show support.

B: About time! I mean, I wish that this was a few years ago.

S: It’s not the first time scientists have come out and said evolution is legitimate and creationism is nonsense.

B: This is different. They took steps. They’re running classes: how to teach it, how to deal with certain questions. This is much more extensive than anything I’ve heard about.

S: Absolutely. They’ve definitely stepped it up. This is a good thing. In the past, the difference between s-called sceptical organisations and more mainstream just purely scientific organisations is that scientists and scientific professional organisations have tended to ignore either controversial fringe or paranormal or pseudoscientific claims. Their thinking is that if it’s not scientifically valid, it’s not worth their time and they don’t want to legitimise it by paying any attention to it. There is a lot of legitimacy to that point of view. When scientists and scientific organisations spend the time to debunk these things they could inadvertently help pseudo-scientists by paying attention to them. It’s better off letter them wallow in their anonymity.

But when something like intelligent design or creationism rises to the level that it has at the grass roots level, and threatens the teaching of evolution, which it historical definitely has, scientists have to take a stand – they have to get involved.

P: Absolutely. And also, don’t forget it’s not really evolution or intelligent design anymore. They’re really throwing the focus on things like the Big Bang, astronomy, certain areas of physics. It’s incredible what they’re setting their sights on. It’s really scary. That scares me more than any of that.

S: Absolutely. As we’ve covered many times on the shows – the agenda is nothing short of changing the definition of science itself. They want science to include supernatural explanations which it fundamentally cannot by its very nature. I don’t think it’s overstating it to say that they want to destroy science as we know it. And I think the scientific community is starting to see this and take notice.

P: Good. About time they got off their dots.

B: Doesn’t that make your blood boil.

S: Ye a little bit.

B: I feel so disgusted I feel like moving away.

S: Interestingly,the more outrageous pseudoscience and anti-science gets the more angry it makes anybody with a brain – anybody who understands science, anybody who loves science as we do. The more angry it makes us. The problem with that is that when we get angry, it makes us sound a little shrill and fanatical. Then the true believers turn around and say “These guys are biased. Look how emotional they are.” So really it works against us. No matter how angry it makes us, we have to take a deep breath ...

B: I know. It’s tough. It’s like talking to someone who believes the Earth is flat. After a while, you’re like “Get a life! Read a real book! C’mon”

S: We know that we’re outraged because of how ridiculous they are, but they make it seem like we’re outraged because of how biased we are. It’s really a catch-22 that we got to watch out for. Let me give you a quote from John West, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. He says “I don’t understand how you can have a discussion of intelligent design if you invite only critics. That sounds like a monologue, not a discussion. I thought this was supposed to be science, not a pep rally.” So again, he’s trying to do this same thing – oh look at these guys, they’re having a pep rally. They’re not allowing us into the dialogue. That shows us just how biased they are. The fact is they don’t deserve to be part of the dialogue because they’re not scientists. They’re attacking science from outside, with logical fallacies, with distortions of evidence, etc etc. They really only deserve to be ridiculed by scientists not made part of the dialogue. That’s one of their core strategies – ‘teach the controversy; let us into the discussion’ – but you know what, you don’t deserve a place at the table. That’s the bottom line. In fact, letting you at the table, in and of itself, would hurt the discussion of science, because it’s not a science.

B: They don’t even belong at the kids’ table.

S: That’s right. That’s right. Another quote by the same guy is that the President of the Missouri based Creation Science Association Tom Willis called the scientists ‘desperate’. Right. That’s typical political nonsense, where if the scientists unite behind evolution they call them desperate, and if they don’t do it then they say “Oh see, support for evolution is eroding.” So no matter what happens – they have something critical to say about it.

P: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

S: So that’s just typical political nonsense. A couple more news items I want to hit before we invite our guest onto the show. We’ve mentioned this topic before: holocaust denial. A British historical revisionist by the name of David Irving has recently plead guilty to claiming that the holocaust never occurred – the Jewish holocaust of WWII. In Austria, which happens to be the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, denying the holocaust is a crime. So he plead guilty to a crime, and he was sentenced to three years in an Austrian prison. Irving is a pseudo-scientist, a pseudo-historian; his denial of the holocaust is pure nonsense.

P: There was a specific thing in this case where he said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. He actually in the end retracted that statement. He said it was a mistake, he shouldn’t have said it.

S: As idiotic as he is, I don’t believe anyone deserves to be in prison for being an idiot. Freedom of expression gives you the freedom to be wrong. He deserves to be ridiculed, not sitting in an Austrian prison. But the Austrians have a different idea of that, and he ran afoul of that.

Perry, you sent me this news item and I think it’s an interesting one: A man who never sleeps.

P: That’s the claim in the piece. He hasn’t slept in many, many years.

B: I’m skeptical. Can’t be!

P: Cannot sleep and has not slept.

S: For 33 years.

B: He’s not human. I don’t think you could be human and not sleep for 33 years.

S: He was a Vietnam man who was apparently normal for some time, and then he had a fever. After this bout of fever he’s had chronic insomnia and hasn’t slept for about 33 years. He’s now in his 60s. He says he can function and he’s otherwise healthy, but he just doesn’t sleep.

P: Is insomnia something you treat Steve?

S: Yes. There are neurologists and and pulmonologists and sleep specialists who treat it. I do occasionally treat insomnia if it’s part of a neurological disorder.

B: Two options here. It’s either a total hoax and this guy is like ‘Hey, I’ll tell a cool story or whatever’. It’s either that, or this guy thinks he’s not sleeping but maybe he has lots of episodes of what’s called micro-sleeps. If you force yourself to stay awake for extended periods of time you’ll experience bouts of microsleep where you’re asleep for moments or seconds and that kind of gets you through it. It’s not a deep sustaining sleep, but it kind of helps a little bit. This guy, maybe he’s having all these episodes of microsleep and he’s not aware he’s having them. That’s how he has remained alive. I think you will literally go insane if you don’t get REM sleep, or any type of sleep.

P: His wife says even liquor can’t put him down.

S: People with “insomnia” do sleep. They have trouble falling asleep, have disturbed sleep, wake early or they may only sleep for an hour or two or three in snatches. They are usually sleepy during the day and will have brief naps during the day. So even people with insomnia do sleep. Insomnia doesn’t mean you go completely and utterly without sleep. That’s the claim here. I guess it’s possible this news account is very inaccurate and maybe this guy has insomnia for 33 years and he’s not completely sleepless. What they’re suggesting in the article, Bob, which you have to list as a third possibility as remote as it is – is this guy’s brain has been altered in some way and he actually can’t sleep. He actually doesn’t need sleep the way that normal people do. That is a rather extraordinary claim. I’d absolutely be very, very skeptical of that.

B: I didn’t even consider that an option. You’d have to reorganise your brain to get by without sleep. It’s not like a simple little chemical change. I think it’d be a significant update to your brain.

S: It wouldn’t be difficult to damage a part of the brain that then would make it difficult or impossible for you to enter your sleep cycle – might make it difficult to make it into sleep. But it wouldn’t make you impervious to the effects of not sleeping. That’s much more of a biochemical process of the brain. What happens when we don’t sleep is that while we’re awake, certain chemicals build up in our brain and we can only get rid of them during sleep. There’s also a host of neurological processes that are necessary during sleep and if we don’t get them all kinds of bad stuff happens to our brain – we do eventually become psychotic, become crazy, and start to hallucinate. The brain cannot function without sleep. The story can’t be accurate, and we will look further into it if we can drag anything up. I couldn’t find anything else on it to find more detail on this article. There’s nothing published in the scientific literature on this. It’s more of a superficial news report.

B: I have thought about what it would be like when we eventually do away with sleep. Who knows how long it’s going to take. As much as I love sleep and sleeping, it’s such a colossal waste of time. Imagine what you could get done.

S: A third of your life.

B: A third of your life. If you make it to 100, you’ve spent 25-30 years of your life in bed. It’s such a waste of time. Look at what this guy has done, he’s dug two ponds at night while everyone’s asleep? Imagine, you could get the equivalent of university degrees; you could read – think of all the reading you could do if you didn’t have to sleep at night.

S: I don’t know that one’s solvable, extrapolating from modern technology. It would take new technologies to achieve that.

B: The article that I read said you would have to, in one sense, reorganize the brain in order to have that happen. It would be a colossal, unbelievable thing. I mean, eventually we’ll be able to do something.

S: It’s hard to argue with eventually. It’s pretty open ended.

B: I’m not proposing breaking any laws of physics here. Eventually our brains will be completely computerised into really fast and hardy software.

S: As long as you’re not violating laws of nature, it’s hard to make the argument that something will never happen.

P: Bob is a firm believer in the coming of the superhuman.

B: It’s inevitable.

S: Well, one last quick item. I thought that we would go from the man that never sleeps to the boy that never eats or drinks. Buddha boy!

B: That’s what it reminded me of.

S: Buddha boy we talked about I think in the November or December episode. He is a fifteen year old who apparently has been mediating under a tree for six months. Has not eaten or drank, by local accounts, for six months.