SGU Episode 383

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SGU Episode 383
17th Nov 2012
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 382                      SGU 384
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
BH: Bruce Hood
Quote of the Week
I'm a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
Wonko the Sane from Douglas Adams's So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish
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Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

S: Hello, and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, November 14, 2012, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella –

B: Hey everybody.

S: – Rebecca Watson –

R: Hello, everyone.

S: – Jay Novella –

J: Hey guys.

S: – and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hey, boys and girls. How's everyone?

S: Good. How are you, Evan?

B: Pretty good.

E: Very fine, thank you.

This Day in Skepticism (0:0:29)

• November 18, 1978: Jonestown massacre

S: Rebecca, I understand you have an uplifting This Day In Skepticism for us today.

R: Yeah. I was trying to find a fun one, but there was one big news story that jumped up – jumped out at me for this week. November 18th, 1978, more than nine hundred people died due to the mass murder–suicides of the People's Temple cult, which was led by Jim Jones, better-known as the Jonestown Massacre. We have talked about this in the past, but there's one fact that I wanted to call out—which might make this slightly uplifting, even though it's still kind of not—but I wanted to highlight one particular person, and that's Congressperson Leo J. Ryan, who was one of the victims, but he's the only U.S. Congressperson to have died in the line of duty. Ryan was a representative in San Francisco, and he was very vocally critical of all kinds of cults, including Scientology and the Unification Church, which was Reverend Moon's church. He started getting these reports from his constituents, who were worried about friends and family members who were getting involved in the People's Temple, which was headquartered in San Francisco but had locations all around California, and, in 1974, of course, the cult began moving to a farm in Guyana, now known as Jonestown, and that was to escape growing media scrutiny. And Ryan heard from these constituents who were telling him that people were being held at Jonestown against their will. So he asked Congress for permission to investigate the cult, but he faced this – just a load of red tape, basically. Despite that, he was eventually able to fly to Guyana to see what was going on. And he went over there with several aides and a number of journalists who wanted to come along for the ride. When he got to Jonestown, several cult members told him and his entourage that they desperately wanted help escaping, and Ryan's crew took the defectors to the nearby airstrip to get them to safety, but they were intercepted by cult members who opened fire on them, killing Ryan, three journalists, and one of the defectors. Ryan was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for being possibly the greatest, most badass Congressperson to have ever served. I mean, can you imagine your present-day Congressperson flying to another continent in order to make sure that you were safe? It beggars belief. But he did it.

E: Mm-hmm.

R: And he paid the ultimate price for it, unfortunately.

E: Yeah, he did.

News Items

Denver UFO (0:03:03)

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/bugged-by-ufos/

This section is in the middle of being transcribed by Cornelioid (talk) as of {{{date}}}. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this section while this message is displayed.

S: Well, Jay, tell us about the latest UFO over Denver.

J: Fox 31 out of Denver, in the United States, did a TV report titled "Mile High mystery: UFO sightings in sky over Denver". So, an investigative reporter named Heidi Hemmat led the report, and she said on air that she was skeptical the first time she heard about the mysterious objects taking off and landing in a populated area over Denver—which i found very ironic, that she used that word, "skeptical", that she used it as if, you know, she was skeptical. Which she isn't. So, anyway, her source of the video is a man who also did not want to be identified, which i found unsettling. The UFOs that this guy captured on the camera—on his digital video camera—can't be seen unless you slow down the footage, because, according to him, they were moving so fast that the human eye couldn't pick up on them until you slowed the video down. So, they slow the video down, and the TV station—and a photojournalist at the TV station—actually brought an expensive camera to the location, which was like a turned-over field—it looked like a farming field—and they put their camera there, and they videotaped the same area of Denver, around the same time that this guy taped his, and they found the same thing. They captured the same exact type of stuff—which, you know, was is it? What are these things? That are in a field, out, you know, in the middle of nowhere? Zipping past the camera, or, you know, far away. What could they possibly be, guys? What could they –

S: Or, "buzzing around the camera"?

J: Yeah, right?

E: Hmm.

J: You look at the video that's – that'll be on the link to the show, and the absolute very first thing—a nanosecond after your brain registers what it's seeing—the first thing your brain says is, "It's a fly! It's an insect!" It looks like an insect. It moves like an insect. It buzzes around like an insect. And, you know what? It's not far away. It's right up on the camera. It's, like, probably a foot in front of the camera.

E: Yeah, we've seen evidence of this before. This is common, and we have talked about it before on the show, and these turn out to be bugs!

J: It's amazing. It's amazing.

B: I know, Jay. A lot of those people just really just didn't quite understand, one: somebody just said that, "Oh wait, these – this is a bug. We're looking at bugs." And this other guy said, "It can't be bugs, 'cause bugs don't fly higher than the clouds." Like, wait a second, dude. Whoa, really?

(laughter)

J: They brought in an aviation expert named Steve Cowell, and he's a former commercial pilot, and—this is so entertaining it blows my mind—he's an instructor, a flight instructor, and an FAA Accident Prevention Counselor. And, very convincingly, he argued that there is just no explanation for this. And then the news reporter, at the end of the newscast, said, "Oh, and it's not bugs. It's not bugs. They guy said it's not bugs."

E: "The guy says", yeah.

J: Oh, OK. So the guy says it's not bugs, so therefore it cannot, absolutely, be bugs. But it is bugs!

R: Well, you know, i mean, why would that guy lie? Come on, Jay. Come on.

J: It just boils my blood. Like, you're on TV. Your job is to report the news—information, unbiased, and as logically as you can. FAIL. No good. You can't do your job.

S: It was 100% failure. It was a total failure.

E: And no (inaudible)

S: And, she said, like, four times, "It's not a bug. Stop saying it's a bug. It's not a bug." I wonder why so many people are telling you it's a bug? 'Cause it's a damn bug.

B: Yeah.

S: It was so obvious. There's a couple of other things—not that you need anything more—but, from the illusory perspective, you know, of the guy who did the film, who thinks that he's looking at spacecraft, he thought, "Oh, it must be landing somewhere at these crossroads", and, of course, there's nothing but residential houses there. Oh, OK, so these ships are taking off and landing every day in a residential area, and nobody sees them. 'Cause they're moving so fast, i guess.

E: Or hears them, yep.

J: Yep.

S: Or hears them. And nothing got picked up on radar. I guess they just haven't (inaudible) radar technology.

B: Nothing on radar.

E: Yeah, they called NORAD or something.

B: And they found some way, obviously, to suppress the sonic booms, right?

J: Yeah.

E: Ha.

B: I mean, didn't that – didn't that guy say that this thing must've been travelling at multiple-mach speeds? OK. No sonic booms? Nothing that – not even that. Even, you know, if you're landing in an area like that, just the disturbance to the air of something moving so fast –

S: Right.

B: – that it's not visible to the naked eye –

J: Bob, you can't question future technology. Come on.

B: Oh my god.

J: The guy who, for some reason, doesn't want the public to know who he is, who's capturing all this incredible footage, at one point, like, you know, the—and i'm just going to very proudly call this a fly, 'cause it was a fly, OK?—so the fly –

S: Jay, it might have been a bee.

J: Whatever. The fly –

E: What kind of fly?

J: You know, you ever see a fly, and their – up close, and their skin is kind of shiny?

S: Yeah.

J: Like, they actually look like there's a rainbow effect going on?

B: Iridescence, yeah.

J: Exactly. So, the fly changes direction, and he freezes the frame, and he goes, "Rocket booster", you know? No.

(laughter)

E: Oh, yeah.

R: Yeah, right.

J: No.

E: Or the after – yeah, "the afterburners".

J: No, that – see, that is called – the afterburner is actually the Sun, like, bouncing off of the fly's body.

B: Jay, i think this guy was actually smart. This guy was smart in not to reveal his name, because when it does come out that this was a bug, he just saved himself years of people going up to him with fake bugs, flying them around his face, and saying, "Look! A UFO! Look! A UFO!"

E: Oh, god.

B: And i think somebody's gotta get down there with a real camera, with the right settings—high definition, high frame rate—so that you could actually see what this thing is, because you could focus in on it. It's blurry. You can't see what it is. You could see the glinting, Jay, that you mentioned, but you can't really make out any structure at all. But if you film it properly, you can do it –

J: Of course, Bob.

B: – especially if you film it. And somebody's gotta do that. It's such an obvious next step, just to completely put this to bed.

E: It would be an easy test to devise to make sure it's an insect.

S: There's a couple of things you could easily do, and the comments to the article have multiple suggestions. Interestingly, this guy's been doing this for a month—like every day, almost, for a month, he's been seeing this—and he hasn't done even basic techniques to try to challenge or question his assumption. So, here's two things that were proposed in the comments that would be very easy.

Math Hurts ()

http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/05/14947181-fear-of-math-makes-your-brain-hurt-study-confirms?lite

Communicating with the Vegetative ()

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/communicating-with-the-vegetative/

Nearby Rogue Planet ()

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20309762

Twisted Light ()

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20217938

Who's That Noisy? ()

Answer to last week: Argon gas in the microwave

Questions and Emails ()

Question 1: Bicycle Physics ()

Follow up from last week regarding the physics of bicycles

Science or Fiction ()

Item #1: While corn is native to the Americas, the innovation of heating corn until it pops was introduced by the English colonists in the 17th century.

Item #2: The modern celebration of Thanksgiving in America began 200 years after the Plymouth celebration, when a letter that had been lost, by the Plymouth colony leader describing the event was rediscovered and publicized.

Item #3: Wild turkeys can run up to 20 miles per hour and fly up to 55 miles per hour.

Skeptical Quote of the Week ()

I'm a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

Wonko the Sane from Douglas Adams's So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

References