SGU Episode 57

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SGU Episode 57
August 23rd 2006
Add an appropriate caption here for the episode icon
SGU 56                      SGU 58
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
Larry Sarner, mathematician and inventor
Quote of the Week
QUOTE
AUTHOR, _short_description_
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 23^rd, 2006. This is your host, Steven Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society. With me here tonight are Bob Novella...

B: Hey everybody!

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello.

S: Perry DeAngelis...

P: Right.

S: ...and Jay Novella.

J: Hey guys.

S: Good evening everyone.

R: Hey.

J: What's up Steve? How you doing?

S: We've got some follow up from last week.

News Items

Water Tree mystery solved (0:44)

• [www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060817-022000-8116r _article_title_]

S: The first follow up is the story of the water-spouting tree. If you recall in San Antonio, Texas, there was a red oak that had a continual little stream of water coming out of a hole in the side of the tree. The property owners and a lot of the locals were moved to believe that this water was a miracle water and they were drinking it, hoping it was going to possess healing powers. Well, the mystery is a mystery no longer.

P: Solved!

S: The city officials did a couple of tests. First they tested the water and they found that a contained chlorine residue that is identical to the chlorine in the city water.

R: Surprise.

P: Just wait a minute here. They also found by the way that it was loaded with bacteria and probably not terribly safe miracle water to be drinking. They also discovered they did a little experiment. They shut the valve on a pipe that was feeding a sink and a shed in the back of the yard and the tree stopped spouting water.

R: Wow. A water pipe. Whoever would have guessed that. I mean, surely not me on last week's podcast. No way could I have solved that mystery.

S: So apparently the tree, one of the roots of the tree penetrated the water pipe and the water being under pressure as it is in pipes, worked its way up through the tree and out the side.

J: So this nasty ass water that's pouring out of the tree that pictures of the people who live there like to show one lady like drinking out of it like a water fountain and then they showed the other guy like bottling it. Pretty much everyone who drank that kind got dysentery?

P: Rubbing it into their wounds to heal them, sure.

R: Actually, it's not nearly as bad as what happened recently in India where it turns out that a creek that was salty water suddenly turned fresh and people took it as a miracle and started saying that the water was healing water so they flocked to it by the thousands, drank it and it turns out that it's one of the most polluted creeks in the world. They dump thousands of tons of raw sewage into the thing every day.

P: Beutiful.

R: And possibly through an increase in pollution or it could have been due to recent rain flooding the creek it temporary loss of salinity and the salinity is back now but thousands of people have bottled the water and taken it home to their families.

P: Good, good, good.

R: Police officials are still trying to get people to stop drinking it.

J: Rebecca Snake Oil is alive and well in this world.

P: Thank god my skepticism has saved me from miracles.

B: So this family that with the tree, they, nobody noticed that the sink and the shack stopped working or it was greatly diminished?

S: I guess it's little used.

J: The real miracle here is that nobody died from drinking that crap.

R: Yeah.

S: Well one more mystery solved by science.

J: Pesky science.

Mystery animal in Maine (4:00)

• [www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208683,00.html _article_title_]

S: And yet we solved one mystery and another one crops up this time in Turner, Maine. A curious beast while chasing a cat was struck by a car and killed and found along the side of the road. Now this creature many locals believed has been menacing local pets for a couple of years. It is charged with killing a rottweiler and a doberman pinscher in the last couple of years. Some of the locals that saw it said in I quote, "It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget."

R: Jay, did you go to Maine?

S: Yes, the local resident says, I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it. Well, there's a couple of pictures of this, obviously we'll link to it on the notes page. And the creature looks a little odd, especially its head is a little oddly shaped. But you look at the whole thing and it's basically a dog.

B: It's bizarre.

S: But it's basically a dog.

B: Yeah, it is. But the head is definitely striking. It's really...

R: It's kind of creepy looking.

B: Yeah, it's creepy. The snout is definitely really short. But it's no mutated, freakish-oid animal that is unexplainable. It's, I explained it.

P: It's a canine.

S: It's definitely a canine. It might not have been you a half-breed with a coyote or something.

J: You're clearly missing what's going on here. What's happening here is that the mystery creature in Maine obviously was drinking from the water coming out of the tree. It mutated it. It went back up to Maine and started killing everybody's pets.

R: Good theory. You should write a book about that.

S: Now they were doing DNA analysis. At least had that's what Bob?

B: Yeah, it says right here. DNA analysis showed the animal was a rare wolf dog hybrid. Case closed.

R: Who would have possibly guessed?

S: Go figure.

P: I believe that that test was paid for by a newspaper. The Maine State, the Wardens, they wouldn't even come down and look at it.

S: They were not interested.

P: They wouldn't even bother.

S: Another hybrid who cares. Well, that's two mysteries down.

P: I'm sure the photo will be on our webpage. Take a look at it. It's a dog.

S: It's right. It's a dog.

P: I mean, please.

S: It might be a funky dog, but it's a dog.

P: It's a funky dog. It's a canine end of story.

Creationism Update ()

• Creationists Attempt to Link Darwin to Hitler
  www.rawstory.com/news/2006/New_TV_special_featuring_Coulter_ties_0819.html
  
  Evolution Strangely Missing from Government Science Grants
  chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=v6pywllczrz22q3ybkb4b94qrx35ckr7
  
• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

Pluto Blues IAU votes on definition of Planet ()

• www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/NEWS.55.0.html
  www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9818-astronomers-lean-towards-eight-planets.html
• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

Questions and E-mails ()

Follow up on Acupuncture ()

Hello,
First I wanted to thank you guys for such an excellent job with the podcast. I discovered it a few month ago and I'm in love (I think my husband is getting jealous - I'm spending a lot more time listening to my MP3 player catching up on the episodes I've missed) Your podcast is such a breath of fresh air.

I am an MD/PhD student, and as medical students we are taught not to challenge patients ideas about their heath, but to work with them and incorporate their believes into the 'standard' medical care. The idea is to make sure they do not abandon you as their doctor all together for an alternative practitioner. As much as it hurts my skeptical sensibilities, I can't entirely disagree with this approach, nor can I come up with a better alternative. So, health professionals are left to perpetuate all kinds of unscientific nonsense or to loose your patient, thus jeopardizing their health. Today I run across an article about acupuncture: www.infopoems.com/infopoems/dailyInfoPOEM.cfm?view=93825 (this is the InfoPOEMs summary with a link to an actual article)

I have a number of concerns about the subject. Most of all I am worried about health professionals (rather than patients or acupuncturist who don't give science much credit anyway) walking away form reading such articles with 'acupuncture works' message and going on to tell their patients about it. On a different note, it is not wise to ignore the evidence if it is there. Assuming the study design is valid (at least I could not see anything glaringly wrong with it), I am trying to think of why it would show the results it did show. Fibromyalgia is an unusual disease, and as far as I know one of the theories about its etiology is diminished blood flow the areas of pain (which is somehow psychologically mediated). The supporting evidence for that would be the fact that both antidepressants and exercise help. Do you think it is possible that putting a needle in would increase the blood flo

Interview with Larry Sarner ()

• Larry Sarner, mathematician and inventor, known for fighting anti-scientific medical practices

Science or Fiction (h:mm:ss)

Item #1: South American Indians were able to smelt platinum long before the technology was available to reach platinum's melting point of 1768.9 C - a temperature unattainable until the nineteenth century. Item #2: Although corn was cultivated in the Americas, it was developed from a grass known only to exist in Asia. Item #3: The sides of the Giza pyramids deviate from a N-S alignment by 3/60 of a degree (3 minutes of arc).

Answer	Item
Fiction
Science

Host	Result
Steve

Rogue	Guess

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Skeptical Puzzle ()

New Puzzle:

A man, a chemist, a pastor by trade
In search of a cure he thought he had made

For the prevention and cure of scurvy, he wrote
His newest discovery he had hoped to gloat

The public's belief in this product was fast
Dermatitis and rheumatism would be things of the past.

As time passed on, and the ills still remained
The product itself would garnish new fame

Still the pharmacies sold it, it would become a tradition
People bought it by the hundreds, the thousands, and millions

For that man long ago we must give our thanks,
While he tinkered with elements, currents, and plants

And though he did not rid the world of rickets or piles
To billions of people, we attribute their smiles.


Who was he and what was his discovery?

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society. For information on this and other podcasts, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.

Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary