SGU Episode 354

Podcast 354 - April 28, 2012 - Live from NECSS 2012 with special guest James Randi

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Skeptical Rogues

• S: Steven Novella
• B: Bob Novella
• R: Rebecca Watson
• J: Jay Novella
• E: Evan Bernstein

Guests

• JR: James Randi

Introduction

?: And now, we are ready for a live broadcast of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Now, I'm sure most of you are OK. Who are listeners to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe?

(cheers)

?: Exactly, exactly. It's obvious. They claim now approximately 120,000 listeners per week. It is the number one skeptic podcast on iTunes, among the top five science podcasts. With 24 million downloads in the seven years since 2005 when they began. Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. You know it, you love it. Um, right now I'm going to introduce the host and producer of the SGU, and he has a couple of other credits for us to make. (laughs) But I'm sure that he'd be happy to retire on that one. He is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University. He started the neurologica blog which covers news and issues in neuroscience, but also general science, scientific skepticism, philosophy of science, critical thinking, and the intersection of science with the media and society. He contributes every Monday to Skeptic Blog, every Wednesday to Science Based Medicine, a blog dedicated to issues of science and medicine and I don't know when the hell he finds the time to sleep. (laughter) Please welcome to the stage, my friend and colleague Dr. Steve Novella.

(applause) (cheers)

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host Steven Novella and this week I am joined by Bob Novella, Rebecca Watson, Jay Novella, Evan Bernstein. So we are live from NECSS 2012 and for our show this year we have a special guest, The Amazing James Randi.

(cheers, applause)

This Day in Skepticism (2:22)

April 28, 1953 A U.S. patent was issued for an overcoat for two people (or Siamese Twins) to Howard C. Rossin (No. 2,636,176).

S: So Rebecca, April 28th, 1953.

R: It's a very important day in Skeptic history, in science history. Of course, for our live audience, this show's going out next week, so that's why we're choosing April 28th. And let me just set the scene for you. The year is 1953. The Korean war is ending, and of course, the most important topic on Americans' minds is what conjoined twins should wear when it gets chilly.

(laughter)

R: Howard C Boss was just the entrepreneur to come to the rescue, on April 27th, 1953, he received a patent for the double overcoat. Now, at the time, single overcoats did exist, however at that point no one had ever taken two single overcoats and sewn them together.

(laughter)

R: And of course, this isn't limited to conjoined twins, it's also perfect for...

S: Because that market's not big enough for him?

R: Well, you know.

S: I mean, did he submit this patent, it's like all right I'm going to say three, four of these things, easy.

(laughter)

R: Exactly. But there's room for growth, there's conjoined twins, there's very obnoxious couples.

(laughter)

R: There's Zaphod Beeblebrox cos-players. And of course, three-legged race participants. This day in science history.

S: Or Monty Python skits maybe.

R: It's true, that's another good one.

S: OK, that was the best you could come up with, by the way for...

(laughter)

R: It's been a busy weekend, Steve.

News Items

Pedantic Words (4:01)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17762034

S: All right guys, what do these words have in common? I'll read them. Hopefully, presently, decimate, anxious, disinterested and nauseous.

R: I know exactly what these words have in common. These are words that I like to call pedant catchers.

S: Pedant bait.

B: Ah yes.

R: If you believe that you are speaking with an English language pedant, you should say something like, man my football team really got decimated on the field. And then they will immediately say, huh excuse me, was one out of the ten of the team murdered?

(laughter)

S: Right.

J: Rebecca, what do you mean one out of ten?

R: Well, the original meaning of the word decimate as you can probably guess from the Latin root is "one out of ten".

J: So if you said the city was decimated, you're saying that one tenth of the city was destroyed.

JR: Yeah.

S: Right, whereas now we mean it to mean most of the city, yeah.

J: But why so specific, who cares?

S: Exactly.

(laughter)

JR: Exactly the point.

R: Yeah.

(laughter)

B: What's the deal with nausea though because I admit I've called that on people cos my understanding was that if you say I'm nauseous it means not that you feel like throwing up, but looking at you makes other people want to puke.

R: Yes.

(laughter)

B: I always people it should be nauseated.

S: That's because you're a pedant.

B: Well OK.

(laughter)

S: You just passed the test.

B: All right, fine. But.

S: You're technically correct, nauseous means you induce nausea in others, believe me, my patients tell me that all the time.

R: And you agree.

S: I was nauseous.

B: Yes, yes you are.

J: But Steve, you can't say hopefully, like hopefully they'll find the missing kid?

JR: Well, hopefully you can, but...

(laughter)

S: You can, technically you'll be wrong except, the reason why this is an actual news item is because the AP style book which is the official book of words and the proper way to use words for journalists, or one of several. They have to update their proper ways to use words and they just updated hopefully to the way that everybody actually uses it, which is as you just did, like you know, hopefully we'll have a good show, as opposed to saying we'll have a good show, Steve said hopefully. Which is the proper way to use the word.

J: So I'm a trend setter.

S: You could look at it that way.

R: Yeah, it's pretty much because of you.

(laughter)

S: Right. Presently, I've always thought that was a British thing, but apparently that's also a time thing.

J: Like what do you mean, give us an example, Steve.

S: I'll give you an example, so you might say I'll be there presently.

J: No, no no no. Give us a real example, let me hear the accent, let's do it.

S: Oh you mean a British...

J: Yeah.

S: I'll be there presently...

(laughter)

S: Meaning I'll be there soon. Or you know, shortly. But people now mean immediately, right now, at this moment. So the meaning has just shifted over time. Some word scholars call these words skunked because you just can't use them any more in a way that, the way in which most people use them is improper and may in fact be misleading so it's hard to use the word properly. If you use it properly, nobody knows what you mean.

B: Yeah.

S: So disinterested is a good one, I think that's the most skunked word on the list there. Disinterested means objective. It means you are detached, you know, it doesn't mean uninterested, but people use it mean uninterested which is a problem because uninterested means uninterested...

(laughter)

S: ...and there's no other word that really means exactly what disinterested means.

J: Does it mean that you're like spaced out?

S: No, it means that you don't have an interest in it.

B: You're unbiased.

S: Yeah, you're unbiased in that you have no (inaudible)

J: So you're agnostic to it,

R: Apathetic.

S: Apathetic, but more than apathetic, you have no interest in it, you have nothing invested in the outcome.

JR: That's like being disuninterested. The same thing.

(laughter)

R: Somebody call AP style book, we have to get this in.

J: Randi, don't you ever decimate me on stage again.

JR: No, I'll try not to.

J: Hopefully, you won't make me nauseous by sitting next to me.

(laughter)

S: Now I'm sure you're all anxious for the next news item.

B: Nauseated.

Sports Pseudoscience (8:23)

special report

S: Evan, you're wearing the sports jersey. What's going on here?

E: We are in New York City and New York City is the professional sports city of America, is it not?

R: No.

(laughter)

E: It's not?

R: Boston, hello.

(some cheers)

R: There's some of you.

B: Chicago.

E: Yeah, that would be good Rebecca, um you know and Boston, you could argue I'd say that it's the second large sports city in America, because they have the second-most sports team championships. No other city though has seen more championships and team sports than New York, 55.

J: Now you're including the Yankees, right?

E: Well, of course, I mean they've got half of it. The Jets have one. Now, sports are probably the fabric of the canvas that makes up New York. And the culture of sports and the culture of New York are definitely inseparable in my opinion. So it should come as no surprise to this audience especially that the culture is rife with pseudoscience and illogical practices. For example, sport has a long and storied history of appeal to superstition. The first Olympic Games were a series of athletic competitions held in the honour of Zeus. And priests would offer sacrifices to their gods so that the athletes that were representing their city states would have sort of upper hand and advantage over the competition.

S: What would they sacrifice?

J: People from the other team.

(laughter)

E: That's the most effective way of making sure that your city-state is going to be the winner. But it comes right up to modern sports, right up until today and superstitions are abundant. So in baseball we have all the famous players such as Ted Williams, Boston fans out there. But did you know that Williams only ever used bats constructed from wood that he would go and hand select, and he wanted the narrowest grain in the wood he said because he felt it helped him hit the ball more cleanly. What evidence there actually was for that? Nobody knows.

R: True story, Ted Williams put his signature on a number of products, and you can purchase a Ted Williams signature home in Florida.

S: Home.

R: Yeah, a friend of mine's parents own a Ted Williams signature home.

S: Is it made of finely grained wood?

(laughter)

R: Yeah, and it has a brain on display. Isn't that the Ted Williams thing? Wasn't there like a fight over his brain?

J: He froze himself.

E: Odd, right?

R: I think, I feel like we talked about that on the show once.

B: I don't remember, did he freeze himself?

J: Absolutely.

R: Yeah.

(laughter)

E: Speaking of frozen.

B: Smart guy.

E: Williams would go through the ritual of bathing his bats in alcohol. He believed that it helped keep his bat cooler in the summer time and therefore help him to perform at the plate.

JR: Actually, he bathed himself in Gin, I've...

(laughter)

R: I think that was Babe Ruth.

E: Or Peggy Manson.

JR: You've screwed up my line with it.

E: Um, and then moving on to tennis, we have a superstar Björn Borg. And during the Wimbledon Tournament.

S: You're not going to dis Björn Borg.

E: No, the Borg. He would stop shaving, he would wear the same shirt every time through the entire tournament.

B: Not Björn, really?

J: No washing?

E: No washing, no goodness no. You don't wash these things the...

S: The mojo would wash out.

J: It's too bad, I really liked him, I remember growing up watching him, I didn't realise that he thought that you could wash luck out of a garment, that's pretty ridiculous.

E: And other athletes will not wash their socks during playoff runs, or their underwear. Yeah.

R: But Tiger(?)'s recently come out with the mojo-stay detergent.

(laughter)

R: It's really effective.

E: In professional football, there is such a thing called the Madden curse. This is a form of superstition that states that a pro football player that winds up on the box of Madden Football's video game series is destined to suffer an injury the next season.

S: What are the odds of having an injury if they're not on the cover of the...

E: Excellent points, what are the odds of not? But 50% of them, roughly half have actually had some sort of injury following coming up on the box.

J: I'll take you to the next thing though, so OK, a company makes a video game, and they take a picture of a guy and they put it on the cover of the game, like other like forces like spirits, they put this guy on the box, let's get him!

R: Get him!

(laughter)

J: Like really, like what are they thinking?

S: Or other players going after him, saying hey he's on the cover, let's get him.

(laughter)

E: So if you're a pro football player, you know yeah it's nice to be on the cover of a box for a game but at the same time they don't want to see themselves on the cover of the next one because they think they're next. So, but we're not limiting the scope of the sports to the United States. We have a gentleman named Barry Fry who was the manager of Birmingham City in the English soccer league. And before games, he would go to each of the four corners of the field, want to guess what he did? Yeah, he marked his territory.

(laughter)

E: He claims to have done this to ward off evil spirits.

J: You sure he wasn't looking for Hoffer? Jimmy Hopper?

E: He wasn't using the right tool if...

(laughter)

J: Tool.

B: Oh boy.

E: And we know that superstitions are purely psychological, they're just a coping mechanism for athletes to deal with the pressures to succeed. Athletes want to believe that these habits and rituals do have a positive effect on their performance when in reality it just comes down to their skills, their physical abilities and their confidence level. But the world of sports also has devices that claim to enhance player performance, even though there's little to no evidence suggesting that they do these things. For example, you'd be hard pressed today to find a major league baseball player not wearing one of those brightly coloured Phiton Titanium necklaces, right. We've got Chester Burlander of the Detroit Tigers, MVP Curtis Granderson, New York Yankees just hit three home runs in a game the other night. Cliff Lee, (inaudible) award winner for the Philadelphia Phillies. These are the spokespeople for this company, and they are out there pitching this brand. Through what the company calls the Phild process, the Titanium is turned into aqua-titanium.

(laughter)

E: Which is trademark gibberish.

R: They put it in some water?

E: Exactly, right.

S: I didn't know titanium could rust.

E: The company claims that while they integrate small amounts of this metal directly into the fabric and these necklaces have healing properties to relieve neck and shoulder pains in the athletes that wear them.

R: It sounds exactly like power balance, like what Jay is wearing.

J: Yeah.

JR: Yes. It's a good thing to introduce this, you've got to know about this.

J: Actually I have a few, I'm just going to throw these out. These are Power Balance bands.

S: Jay, Jay, they're placebo bands.

J: Placebo? No, those are the fakes. They're exactly like Power Balance bands, they're made at the same factory, you can go to placebobandstore.com, we're going to have these at our table later today, and for fund raising. But the joke here is that a friend of ours buys these from the manufacturer, they're identical, they even have a hologram in them but this hologram has the letter P for placebo band, they're quite comfortable, and they're good, you know this is a good thing, you know you're at work and your friends like... oh that's... no no, this is actually... you know, it's a starting point for a conversation, you can correct people.

JR: The thing that they did in Australia, by the way, with one of the Power Bands that they were selling in Australia, the Australian Government made them issue refunds, exact refunds plus postage to every customer who bought one of those bands. Why can't we do that in this country?

E: Mmhmm.

(applause)

J: Totally agree.

S: There was a class action suit in California that's going against them so.

JR: Oh really?

S: Yes, so they're having international trouble. Richard Saunders, the Australian Skeptic that's a colleague of ours sent us recently, he sent around a picture of, I don't think it was Power Bands, it was the next brand of the same thing, the same magic bracelet, they were originally selling for $60. And he found them in the discount bin for like $2, at this store. So they really have done a good job of knocking that industry.

R: They still only cost about 10 cents.

(laughter)

S: Still got the profit margin there, yeah.

JR: Richard told me that these cost the equivalent of 18 cents to be manufactured. Look at the mark-up from 18 cents to what, $50?

S: $50, $40, $50, $60, yeah.

JR: The value...

J: But Randi, they have holograms.

JR: Oh, a hol... I forgot, oh silly me.

R: The most advanced technology of 1985.

(laughter)

S: Space-age technology.

J: I was enthralled by holograms for about 5 seconds when they first came out. Oh yeah, colour, nice.

(laughter)

J: They came out with the guard, like the mouth guard with the similar, I don't know if they have the magnets you talked about that.

R: Oh look at that.

E: We're going to jump into that next.

R: I like it when we accidentally set up each others' bits. It's like we planned it.

E: Mouth guards yes, so...

J: Do you know what you think about that Evan?

E: We do know a bit about that actually, Steve, you're going to tell us a little bit about mouth guards.

S: Oh yeah, so mouth guards, I mean a lot of sports athletes wear mouth guards to protect their teeth and their facial structures from impacts and injury, but did you know that mouth guards also can improve athletic performance? Endurance, strength, balance, whatever. This is all based on neuro-muscular dentistry.

(laughter)

R: Steve, I'm just going to get out my wallet right now.

S: Yeah, this is a blank cheque. Honestly, how many people in the audience have heard of neuro-muscular dentistry before I just mentioned it right now?

(silence)

E: It's about zero.

S: That's interesting, would you be surprised to learn that it's been around for 50 years? 50 years this pseudoscience has been simmering along in the background, totally under the radar, there's very little written about it skeptically. So there's, and like a lot of these pseudosciences that endure for a long time, there may be a kernel of truth in that, for actual dentistry, you know maybe you should consider not just like the fit of the teeth, but also the TMJ, the temporal mandibular joint and the muscles of the jaw. That's fine, that's sort of the legitimate kernel to neuromuscular dentistry. But then they go beyond that to say, oh yeah and these muscles will also control the performance of other muscles in your body. Noooo, they won't. That of course, is based on applied kinesiology. How many people here have heard of applied kinesiology before.

(some clapping).

S: So that's a little bit more well known psudoscience.

R: Did you just make them clap for applied kinesiology?

(laughter)

S: Yes.

R: He's just messing with you.

S: Some people were raising their hands, you know the whole drill. So yeah, that's a similar notion of like you know the magical effects from one part of the body to the other. So you know, hey if you're going to manufacture mouth guards for sports stars, why not also throw in some magical claims that it's going to improve your performance and then they do some crappy in-house studies where they have some academic at a university do it, but it's still studies with 10 people, 15 people, way too small. There was one, Evan and I were looking at this one study that was touting a significant improvement in reaction time to visual stimuli, the improved reaction time was 10 milliseconds.

J: Steve, that helps with whack a mole.

(laughter)

S: Audio stimuli, 2 milliseconds, 2 thousandths of a second. That's no difference. But they were selling that as evidence for a "significant" improvement in performance.

E: Steve, how much do they charge for these sorts of mouth guards if you want them?

S: The customised mouth guards, the ones that are supposed to give you the benefit can cost up to two to three thousand dollars.

J: What!?

E: Yep.

J: What? How?

S: That's a good cam.

E: Now that's a good bit.

J: You've got to realise, the people that own that company are just laughing all day. Look another jackass just bought one, cha-ching, cha-ching! That's real money man, you could make hundreds of millions of dollars with that, with the money that the athletes spend on all this garbage.

JR: Except in Australia they'll make you give the money back. I still, I'm appalled that we can't do that in this country. If they can do it in Australia we sure as hell can do it here.

S: Yeah, they're supposed to be behind us, not ahead of us.

J: We need Richard Saunders to move here and make it all happen.

JR: Yes, yes. I'm all for that.

E: We talked about the power bands just a little bit before, you know regarding placebo effect certainly, and now athletes, they just don't get it. Now, sports nonsense is not just limited to devices and superstitions, there is outright kerankery and woo that defies all logic and is just to the point of silliness. Take Novak Djokovic for example. You know who he is, he's the number one ranked mens tennis player in the world. Winner of five grand slams tennis tournaments, three out of four grand slams in 2011, which is a remarkable feat, that's only ever happened about a handful of times in history. So what does he credit for his success? Well, in an interval he credits hard work, his intense endurance training and the assistance of doctor Igor Cetojevic, an acupuncturist from Serbia who specialises in something called quantum technologies.

J: Hi Everybody!

(laughter)

E: Now, how does quantum technologies work, you might ask. Well, according to the doctor's website, here's one line. The Einstein paradigm as applied to vibrational medicine sees human beings as networks of complex energy fields that interface with physical/cellular systems.

S: Got that?

E: That's just one sentence out of paragraphs of gobbledegook and nonsense that is designed to sound impressive but has no scientific validity whatsoever.

S: So hard work, training and magic.

E: And magic.

S: Yeah, that's the part of this nutritious breakfast ploy.

R: That's Randi's success story.

(laughter) (applause)

E: The number one tennis player in the world! My gosh.

J: Randi, you play tennis?

E: Number two.

B: There really should be a law against quantum abuse, that's reprehensible.

R: It's so tiny.

S: Call it the Bob law. Thou shalt not abuse quantum technology.

E: Do you guys remember Sydney Crosby?

S: Oh yeah.

E: he's the national hockey league, he's the MVP, former MVP in national hokey league and Stanley Cup champion, right? He's a big name for hockey. And he credits his recovery from concussion symptoms to Dr. Ted Carrick. We've spoken about him on the show before. His healing brand is called chiropractic neurology.

B: Oh boy.

S: Chiropractic neurologist, neuromuscular dentist, you're getting the pattern there, right?

E: Yep, yep.

J: What is, I don't even know that that is.

S: Yeah right, it's just pseudoscience applied to, with a neurological theme. You know, created by a couple of chiropractors.

R: It's just add neuro to a previously existing pseudo sciences.

J: Yeah, but what does he do, like what does he do to you?

S: Alright, so for example like one thing he says, we could tell what your brain function is like by the blind spots on your eyes, which is not true. And then he adjusts your neck and your blind spot gets better so your brain got better. That's what it is, it's just pure nonsense.

J: But are people going I have blind spots.

S: No they're saying I have weakness, he says well let me see, oh yeah I can see that your blind spot is bigger on the left side that on the right side. Let me adjust that, oh all better. That's what it is.

(laughter)

E: Sidney suffered his injury over a year ago and he went to Carrick over last summer to get treatments and he was getting ready to come back to the league and everything and actually did come back for a bit but then the symptoms came back, he had to step out again. So the treatment...

S: Didn't take.

E: Whatever, it didn't work. So what does he do? He goes back to Dr. Carrick again and he's in sessions with him again.

S: All right.

E: So.

S: Thank you Evan, I am shocked that there is superstition in sport.

E: Superstition, nonsense.

JR: Another point here that you have to deal with here though is, perhaps these sports figures are not convinced that the thing works, but they collect some loot.

S: Oh yeah.

JR: For endorsing it.

E: Oh no doubt about it, they sure do.

JR: That might be their only motive, we don't know.

E: Well I think one of the other motives for these athletes is that, they obviously don't know the science behind what they're doing but the other thing is that they see their counterparts and they see their fellow athletes doing it, they feel so strongly about having every little edge they can possibly get, they don't want their competition having that little slight edge over them, they want to be, the want to have the power band, they want to have the Phiton necklace, they want to go to the Chiropractic neurologist.

S: Chiropractic, neuro-muscular ocular whatever. Applied kinesiology.

J: Randi's right, Steve and I, we were researching something recently, remember we were laughing at like the professional athletes were giving comments, and it was so marking canned, like first off that guy did not say that, somebody sitting in an office wrote that, I love using my blah bla-blah when I'm paying tennis, it's wonderful. Like an athlete doesn't talk that way. The guy's like a surfer dude and he's like...

S: Yeah. Right. All right.

Nuking Asteroids (25:02)

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/how-it-would-work-destroying-incoming-killer-asteroid-nuclear-blast

S: So Bob, we have yet another crazy scheme to protect the Earth from rogue asteroids that are going to destroy us.

Splotch Ness Monster

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1681-a-study-showed.html

SGU Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7iJ-pu5T4I

Science or Fiction ( )

Segment: Science or Fiction [ Click Here to Show the Answers ] Item #1 A hen in Sri Lanka has given birth to a live chick, fully formed and healthy. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134242/Chick-born-egg-Sri-Lanka-So-chicken-came--NOT-egg.html Item #2 Scientists report successfully treating neuronal hearing loss in a trial using stem-cell therapy. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120421203911.htm Item #3 The most accurate study so far of the motion of stars near our sun find no evidence of dark matter in our vicinity, contradicting current models. http://saoastronews.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/no-dm-in-solarneighbourhood/

Remembering Perry

Remembering Perry A Tribute to the Venerable Perry DeAngelis I am a sceptic. I am a free thinker. I discard drivel and exonerate exactitude. I thank Perry DeAngelis. I'm a relatively new listener to the Sceptics' Guide, only tuning in to the weekly podcast since November 2011. In a desperate attempt to fill my week-long sceptical void (i.e. the 6 days between new podcast releases) I've been listening to the archive – starting from episode 1! I have just endured the most difficult episode to date, namely, the Perry DeAngelis tribute episode. Since those tentative first few episodes, when I asked myself - Who is this DeAngelis character, and why isn't he podcasting anymore? I researched his ultimate fate, and knew this day was inevitable. It has been particularly painful this last week listening to the episodes where Perry would phone in his sceptical quote from his hospital bed, knowing what was in store. It saddens me deeply that I never knew him while he was alive, but I'm grateful to have become acquainted with him over the past 6 months. He, and the other members of the SGU, have been the best company on my daily walks to-and-from college. The sceptical community has lost a courageous icon. I think it truly stands testament to him and his character when 5 years on, he still deeply touches people and continues to inspire a movement though this podcast. Being a poor student, I'll forgo eating this week to make a donation to the Perry DeAngelis Memorial Fund! (Just kidding, noodles all the way! ) I pay homage to the exceptional life this man has led, delivering to the masses a copious dollop of intellect and laughter every week! I will forever hold him in the highest esteem. Best wishes, A Devoted DeAngelis Disciple Kevin O'Connell Cork, Ireland

Skeptical Quote of the Week ( )

Segment: Skeptical Quote of the Week Skeptical Quote of the Week "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynisism by those who have not got it" - George Bernard Shaw