SGU Episode 87

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SGU Episode 87
March 21st 2007
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 86                      SGU 88
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
Quote of the Week
'I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.'Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, 1901
'I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.'Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, 1901
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Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

Voice-over: 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. This is your host, Stephen Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society and today is March 21^st, 2007. Joining me this evening are Bob Novella...

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Hello everyone.

S: Perry D'Angelis...

P: Right.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Happy National Agriculture Day everybody.

R: Happy what?

E: Happy National Agriculture Day.

R: National Agriculture Day?

E: Yep.

R: Isn't the equinox more important?

E: Agday.org. Check it out.

J: How do people celebrate Agriculture Day? I mean, what do they eat?

E: Oh, it's very easy.

J: What do you do?

P: Plant some stuff in your beard.

E: Pray to the goddess of the harvest.

J: Do they actually celebrate that holiday?

E: No.

S: It's not a holiday. It's just a recognition day.

J: Yeah, but does anyone celebrate it? I mean, Rebecca, you're the resident vegetable cook. What do you do? You must be all over this. What do you got? The t-shirts and the mug and what do you got?

R: What?

P: I remember going up to the Big E, which is the New England State Fair for kind of all six states get together for one fair. There's some very militant farmers up there, let me tell you. So I bet those guys celebrate it.

S: It's also the first day of spring.

P: Yes.

B: Yes.

S: Even though there's a foot of snow on the ground outside.

E: What are you going to do? Global global warming. Global cooling.

R: You can celebrate the first day of spring by staying inside and balancing an egg on its end. Just like you can do every other day of the year.

E: I balanced an egg on its side today.

S: Did you?

E: Oh yeah it was perfect.

S: How long did that take you, Evan?

E: An hour.

J: I had chicken salad for lunch.

P: Aren't the Druids and the Wiccans out in the woods tonight?

J: The little people.

S: It's one of their holy days, yes.

P: Yeah, that's right. I think they're dancing around tonight.

J: Somebody's dancing around outside.

S: So they're dancing around in the woods naked, balancing eggs on their head?

P: We should take a ride later. We don't want a big flashlight.

R: Why don't you bring a bucket of wings?

J: Rebecca, as a vegetarian, do you have to donate money to the cause? What do you got to do?

R: To which cause?

J: The agriculture cause.

R: What are you talking about?

R: What's the cause? It's food that you eat. What's wrong with you?

P: Yeah, does agriculture include livestock, right?

S: Perry worships cows.

E: I worshipped a cow once and I divorced her.

P: Oh!

E: Bam!

P: Good one.

E: Thank you.

P: Ten points, Evan.

S: Well, we have a few real news items this week.

P: Hey, believe me, that was news.

News Items

Intercessory Prayer Meta-analysis (2:44)

• www.theness.com/neurologicablog/default.asp?Display=60
  

S: A meta-analysis of intercessory prayer has been published.

P: I believe you blogged about this, Steve.

S: Yes, I did. This is published by a guy called Hodge. In the journal Research on Social Work Practice, this guy's name is David R. Hodge, and this is a meta-analysis of 17 studies of intercessory prayer. The meta-analysis is pretty much total garbage. The studies include both some poorly designed studies, some better studies. What he does is he mixes together the outcomes, so we're looking at both in vitro fertilization and coronary bypass outcomes. So completely different target diseases or situations. One thing he does is if a study was looking at five or six or seven outcomes, he kind of pools it all together to give one total score for the study. Each study ends up getting a number, like how many people in the study were helped or not helped, and then he does a meta-analysis combining all of those numbers into one final number and showing that statistical significance, meaning that there was a statistically significant beneficial effect to being a target of intercessory prayer in all of these studies together. The problem with using meta-analysis in this way is that you can't meaningfully combine studies that were looking at different populations and different outcomes. It's completely illegitimate to combine the various outcome measures into one total score.

R: I've noticed, Steve, that every time somebody comes up with a new meta-analysis, nine times out of ten, it's crap, and so now whenever I see the word meta-analysis, even if it supports something that I know is a fact, I vomit a little in my mouth.

P: Is it impossible to do good meta-analysis?

S: No, it's just difficult. You have to know what you're doing. The purpose of a meta-analysis is if you have a number of studies that were conducted in a similar way that are looking at the same thing, looking at the same intervention for the same disease and the same basic population, and maybe each study has a hundred or two hundred or whatever subjects in the study and they may have shown a trend one way or the other or they were inconsistent results, you could pool those together as if it were one study with three hundred people, and therefore you have one more powerful, statistically powerful study to say, is there a net positive or negative effect for this intervention? Doing a good meta-analysis is very difficult. You have to very carefully select the studies that you're going to pool together, and you have to be very careful with your statistics. What Hodge did is a very good example of exactly what not to do with a meta-analysis. He's combining studies that really should not be combined together. He is basically smashing all of the different outcome measures together. He also is including some very suspect studies in his meta-analysis, most notably the Wirth Columbia in vitro fertilization study, which has basically been totally discredited. The guy, Wirth, who basically did the research, has been shown to be a fraud basically. So he's basically including discredited, fraudulent data in his meta-analysis.

P: So it's clear that Hodge had a conclusion and then did the study to support his conclusion.

S: Yes, he's written on spirituality in counseling and social work practice before. This is clearly an interest of him. He's written the book called The Spiritual Assessment, a handbook for helping professionals. He seems to have a predisposition in this direction.

P: Yes, slightly.

S: Right, but regardless of that, his methods are crap. That's the bottom line. This is a worthless meta-analysis. Now, if you actually read the study, which I did, he actually says some of the things that he should say in the discussion and the conclusion. He acknowledges a lot of the weaknesses that I'm talking about, although he doesn't talk about the Wirth study. I think that was an incredible oversight that he included a discredited study, which completely contaminates his data. He doesn't talk enough about the weaknesses of his study. He's somewhat conservative in the conclusions that you draw from it, although he always puts that positive spin on it. Even though it was inconclusive, it always deserves more study and shows that there's something really to this. Now, of course, the press...

P: I was going to say, it wasn't inconclusive according to the media.

S: Right. Now, the media, they take all of this, they totally whitewash over all the complexity, and they say, study shows prayer really works. I mean, that's basically the headlines that you see. Even in the Arizona State University where this guy's from, their own press release is, does God answer prayer? ASU research says, yes. I mean, that's their own press release. Not maybe, not inconclusive, not the more conservative stuff that he was obliged to put in his study, otherwise he probably wouldn't have gotten it published. Really completely reprehensible misrepresentation of the data. Getting back just to a minute on meta-analysis, Rebecca, I mean, there was actually a really good study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which I linked to from my blog entry on this. What they... It was a very clever thing. What the researchers did is they looked at meta-analyses for some specific question where, in the intervening time since the meta-analysis was published, there was a large definitive trial looking at the same question. They said, well, how many times, what percentage of time does a meta-analysis predict the outcome of a later definitive large clinical trial? The answer was that it was about two-thirds of the time it was an agreement, one-third of the time it was not an agreement.

B: That's not that bad.

S: It's not that good either. I mean, 50-50 would be chance, right? This was two-thirds, one-third, which means maybe it's actually only adding a little bit of information to the predictive value of just flipping a coin, right? It was better than flipping a coin, but still that's not by much.

R: Yeah, it's not that great.

S: It's not that great, yeah.

R: And I feel like it's a really good indicator when you're looking at something and it's not quite making sense. I think that's a big red flag is when it's a meta-analysis because that's a very easy way for people to pick and choose what data they want to highlight and what they want to kind of fall by the wayside and downplay.

S: When you do a meta-analysis, you've got to be very careful about how you pick your studies. Anything that biases the studies that you pick will bias your outcome. And you have to really make sure that you're being very systematic and thorough and sequential, etc. But the other big thing here is that often clinical research goes through stages where you have some initial small studies that are basically just testing the waters. Is there anything to this? We want to make sure that people aren't going to drop dead like flies when you give them the intervention or that it's not going to be worse than what's already out there or that it's not utterly worthless before you then start subjecting people in a larger study. And this is just basic human research ethics. Then as you get these initial studies, usually the results are somewhat mixed. Then maybe you get some slightly larger studies, maybe with some actual controls in place. And again, usually different studies may use different designs or different outcomes, and you may get some conflicting data, but there'll be a suggestion of whether or not it works. But it's hard to really often come up with a definitive conclusion based upon this early phase of research. And then down the road, the lessons you learn from these earlier studies about how to design it well, how to control it well, you fix all the problems and criticisms of the earlier studies and you get to this large consensus definitive trial or series of trials that answer the question. And that's the information that's reliable. If you look at intercessory prayer, what we see is a hodgepodge of studies with mixed results, but there's this general tendency that the better studies tend to be negative. And then you have some large definitive trials that are absolutely negative. There's also one thing I point out, and this has been pointed out by others, the cardiac trials. If you just look at those series of trials, there were two that showed a positive effect from intercessory prayer in some of the outcomes they looked at, but not others. And a very important thing to note is that the outcomes were different in the different studies. In one study, it was a decrease in the length of stay in the coronary care unit, and in another study, it was the overall health assessment, but not the length of stay. And neither of them were better in complication rate, so you look at the different variables didn't agree with each other. So basically, those studies are a wash. It's not really meaningful to pick out just the one positive outcomes and ignore all the negative outcomes. I mean, that's cherry picking the data.

P: The only way you're ever going to compile evidence that intercessory prayer works is by using crap science. I mean, that's it. That's it.

S: But what Hodge does is then he whitewashes over all of that, the evolution of the research, the weighting of good trials over bad trials, the consistency, internal consistency of similar trials, over all of it, and you get this one number that means absolutely nothing. This is worthless. And it really now is going to be completely, is being completely misrepresented in the media and just confuses people about how clinical science works. You know? It's bad.

J: So, Steve, he was criticized for this study, of course, right?

S: I haven't read any yet.

R: Yeah, by us.

S: I mean, he was criticized by me.

J: A lot of them by you.

E: He just was.

S: Yeah, I haven't read anything yet, but I happened to see the study right when it came out, like the day it came out. So I probably was one of the first writers to comment on it. I jumped on it pretty quickly. I think we're probably going to start seeing more criticisms yet.

P: But you won't see it in the media.

S: No, not in the mainstream media.

P: No, you will not see the criticism.

S: It's already had that cycle, and that cycle was totally gullible.

P: Let's say prayer works, done, next.

S: Yep.

Biology Teacher Fired for Referring to the Bible (13:10)

• www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/03/20/teacherfired.ap.ap/index.html
  

S: The next news item involves a biology teacher in Oregon that was fired.

J: I was very surprised that they actually fired a teacher, like, right on the first time that the person did it. The person was actually a substitute teacher, right?

S: Yeah, this is a high school biology substitute teacher, Chris Helfenstein. In her teaching of biology class, she included biblical references and material provided to the students. This is extra material that was outside the official curriculum, also material critical of evolution.

P: Right.

S: I think she was there for eight days.

B: It's a guy, Steve. It's a guy.

S: Oh, is it a guy? Chris is a guy? I'm sorry, K-R-I-S. It's one of those androgynous names. So he was there for about eight days, I think, and was fired when it came to the attention of the powers that be. One of the board members, Jeff Smith, was quoted as saying, I think his performance was not just a little bit over the line. It was a severe contradiction of what we trust teachers to do in our classrooms. He just defended himself saying that he was just trying to teach "critical thinking". He said, critical thinking is vital to scientific inquiry.

R: Oh my god.

S: My whole purpose was to give accurate information and to get them thinking.

R: I love people who think that they can win just by completely redefining their favorite words.

S: Right, right.

B: Yeah, and Steve, he said his purpose was to give accurate information, yet he uses a PowerPoint presentation that makes links between evolution, Nazi Germany, and planned paradigm.

S: That's right.

B: That's the accurate information.

S: The old evolution Nazi connection.

J: That guy did the classic stop, drop, and lie.

P: Oh, God. That was terrible.

J: It wasn't me. It wasn't me.

R: I wonder if he was using that classic kind of creationist argument where they talk about Darwin being the inspiration for Hitler weeding out the, you know.

J: Some father of one of the students said, how many minds did he pollute? That's an awesome statement. Very harsh.

S: Did he pollute, yeah.

J: You know what? I'm shocked that they fired this person so quickly. No slap on the wrist. Nothing.

S: I'm not shocked by it. I think that, you know.

P: This is pretty blatant.

S: They're very sensitive to this these days. I mean, no school system wants to be criticized for teaching pseudoscience and a religious agenda.

P: And don't underestimate the Dover decision last year. That was no joke.

S: They were nipping this in the butt and that's the right thing for them to do. One final comment about this guy, Chris said, I never taught creationism. I know what it is and I went out of my way not to teach it. So he's using the old, I'm not teaching creationism. I'm just teaching critical thinking about evolution.

E: Let the students make up their own minds.

S: I'm just teaching just being critical of evolution as a way of getting around the I'm not teaching religion criticism. But again, so far that that dodge has not worked. And this is another example of it not working, which is very good. And it remains to be seen where the creationists are going to go next, if they're not even allowed allowed this.

P: Keep closing the doors on them.

Animal Rights Activists and the Polar Bear (16:24)

• www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=443343&in_page_id=1811&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=picbox&ct=5
  

S: One final news item this week, Perry, you sent me this is the kind of a funny story about, the Berlin Zoo has a baby polar bear.

P: Now, a few people have not seen a picture of this bear.

S: It's the cutest thing in the world.

P: It's like a living teddy bear, this thing.

J: You would almost let this guy maul you, right, Perry?

P: Let's face it. I've always been kind of animal neutral in my life. But even I can see the obvious mega cuteness of this creature.

R: Animal neutral? You you gladly will eat any animal.

P: Oh, let's not get started with the vegetarianism again, lady, please.

R: You love animals with a little sauce.

P: Now, listen-

J: What Perry is saying is he won't eat it until it's full grown.

E: Or fully cooked.

P: I don't eat bear. This bear Knut was he was born in his brother. The mother abandoned him. The brother died. The zookeepers went in and rescued this bear. They named him Knut and now they're raising him. And that includes bottle feeding him and cuddling him and so forth. Now, the animal rights activists, the spokesman in this piece is Frank Albrecht. He says, "The zoo must kill the bear. Feeding by hand is not species appropriate, but a gross violation of animal protection laws." So his solution for this, because he thinks that feeding it by hand is not species appropriate, is to kill it.

E: That's called the final solution.

P: So he wants to address the problem. Now, let's talk about a different way to feed it. Maybe we can put the bottle somewhere out. No, let's go right to the legal injection and kill the bear. He's an animal rights activist.

R: What is he backing that up with? Like what's-

S: He says they cannot domesticate a wild animal. He's going to be humiliated.

P: It's to protect his dignity.

S: Cause he's not being treated like a predator.

B: Why, why even bring up the word domesticate? I mean, no one is bringing this home and putting a bear bowl for this thing to eat. That's not even accurate.

S: Domesticate is actually the wrong word anyway, because the domestication is something that happens evolutionarily over time.

P: Of course.

S: And you can't domesticate an individual animal. You can tame them, but you can't domesticate.

P: It just shows the insanity of these people. Hey, hold on for the zoo guy named Shul said polar bears are under threat of extinction and if we feed the bear with a bottle, it has a good chance of growing up and perhaps becoming attractive as a stud for other zoos to help maintain the species.

J: If it's going to be in the zoo, why do they need it to be so feral if it's in a zoo? Wouldn't you want it to be a little, just a tiny bit more docile so that it doesn't kill people?

R: I know that PETA has said, stated in the past that they want no one to have any pets at all and that if it were up to them, they would free every animal that is currently living in a home.

J: Yeah. Cause my dog would have any chance of living on his own.

R: Yeah.

E: Nice extremism.

P: PETA is way crazy. The only people more extreme than them are the animal liberation front and that they're of course outlawed.

R: And they're all tied up together.

P: They're outlawed. The FBI hunts them down.

J: Really?

P: Yeah. The animal liberation front. Yeah. They're just like the environment, the ELF, the environmental.

E: They're on wanted lists.

P: I mean, they burn and kill people and you know, it's like people who kill abortion doctors to stop what they perceive as murder. If you want to protect animals, join the humane society. Okay. Stay away from these, from these fringe insane groups.

S: Who want to kill this cute little bear.

J: Some of the comments on the, on the site that reported this, the people were saying things like those stupid animal activists should euthanize themselves.

S: That was basically-

P: Basically.

B: I almost had a hard time actually even believing some of these quotes. It just really made no sense to me. I mean, polar bears with all the news about polar bears and lately about them pretty much going extinct. Some people saying that it's a done deal. They're just like walking dead animals at this point, cause there's really not much we could do at this point. So you have this going on that you've got this beautiful, this cute little polar bear and because they don't want it to be humiliated, they're saying, give it a lethal injection. I mean, does that even, what it just seems too extreme.

S: The concept that this bear is going to be humiliated because it's being bottle fed is ludicrous.

B: It makes no sense to me.

E: It's the same kind of people who put hats and scarves on their dogs.

S: Worse than that. First of all, first of all, mammalian predators they, they suckle. I mean, it's not like these little baby polar bears are going out, killing seals.

P: That's right.

S: They're sucking their mothers, right? I mean, it's the same thing eating with a bottle and they'll throw steaks at it when it grows up.

P: We'll have a link on our notes page. You gotta, you've got to go there and look at films of this bear. You have to.

J: How far gone are polar bears by the way? I mean, are they really that in that bad of shape?

S: They're in trouble. They're in trouble.

B: Yeah, they're in real trouble.

P: Well, the global warming is melting all the ice they're walking around stranded out there.

E: Aren't they interbreeding with other bears and new bear populations are arising?

S: They might. I mean, the most common response to loss of habitat is to go somewhere else is migration, is habitat tracking.

E: And co-mingle with other species.

S: Yeah, they'll be, but the polar bear as it is now is certainly being threatened by the changes, whatever you think is causing them by the changes in the Arctic climate. The ice doesn't have to break up that much. The big thing, the big difficulty is that they, polar bears hunt by staking out holes in the ice and then when the seals come up for air, they ambush them and kill them and eat them. If the ice is broken apart, the seals don't have to come up in these little holes, they can just come up anywhere. So the polar bears have lost their hunting strategy.

J: Can't we just drop off?

E: They need seal vending machines.

B: Steve, I hadn't heard that one. That's pretty interesting. The one that I heard most often was the fact that they when they go for these long swims, I guess for, for feeding, they generally every now and then they'll just kind of rest on a, on a little chunk of ice that's floating. And since there are so few of them now they pretty much go swimming and then that's it. They can't find any and they drown.

S: Yeah that's another problem as well. Yeah.

P: So this story about nude is apparently quite big in Berlin. So if we have any listeners over there in Germany keep us informed. Let us know what the ultimate outcome of the buzz is.

S: Yeah. I was at the San Diego zoo recently. They have two polar bears there. They are gorgeous.

P: And huge. Aren't they the biggest, aren't they bigger than grizzlies?

S: They're huge bears.

P: I believe they're the largest bear.

S: Maybe.

B: No, they're not the largest.

S: They're very big and they're very, very beautiful, beautiful bears. They really are. Let's go on to your emails.

Questions and E-mails

Pluto Corrections (23:30)

Just a quick comment. Lowell Observatory is at Flagstaff, AZ, not in New Mexico.

Jim Fitzl
Eau Claire, WI


Gentle People,

First let me say that I thoroughly enjoy your podcast and I have turned my wife onto it also. It is the only podcast that she listens to without fail each week.

Now to the topic of my email. I was acquainted with Clyde Tombaugh, the discover of Pluto. He was a long time faculty at New Mexico State University (where I am a member of the Department of Economics). Mr. Tombaugh was much beloved and revered resident of New Mexico for many years.

My favorite story involves inviting him to speak to a student honor society that I advized. Despite his very advanced age, he agreed. He arrived toting an oxygen tank. It was obvious that he could not hear despite hearing aids and that he was nearly blind. I thought that a disaster was in the making and that there was no way that he could give the promised keynote speach. But my fear was unwarranted. He in fact gave a wonderful half-hour speech full of antidotes and jokes. By the end of the speech, he had the students eating out of his hand. The essences of his speech was to use his life story to inspire others to a life of inquiry and science.

The recent memorial by the New Mexico legislature was not an attempt to redefine the use of the term 'planet' by scientist but rather an attempt to honor a marvelous educator who used his fame to the benefit of the students of New Mexico.

Chris Erickson
Department of Economics
New Mexico State University

S: First email, we actually have two emails that are just quick corrections about our discussion.

P: The polar bear is the largest bear on earth. Thank you.

R: You're welcome.

S: Thanks for that clarification.

J: Oh, that's fantastic, Perry.

B: Wow.

P: Continue.

S: So we don't have to correct that next week, but I do have to correct something we said last week about Pluto. So remember last week, you mentioned briefly that the state of New Mexico passed a law saying that Pluto was a planet in New Mexico. We mentioned that the Lowell Observatory was in New Mexico and Jim Fitzel writes to tell us, just a quick comment, Lowell Observatory is at Flagstaff, Arizona, not in New Mexico.

R: Those are pretty much the same state.

E: One of those big squirters states out west.

R: Harris running out of New Mexico.

P: Go to Four Corners, who can tell what they're doing?

R: Mexico.

S: But Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto, was a resident of New Mexico.

S: We got another email. This one comes from Chris Erickson from the Department of Economics at the New Mexico State University and he writes, "Gentle people, first let me say that I thoroughly enjoy your podcast. I have turned my wife onto it also."

P: Did he call us gentle?

S: Yes.

E: Did he say turn my wife onto it?

S: Yes, he did.

E: Okay.

S: Said "this is the only podcast that she listens to without fail each week. Now to the topic of my email. I was acquainted with Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. He was a long time faculty at New Mexico State University. Mr. Tombaugh was much beloved and revered resident of New Mexico for many years. My favorite story involves inviting him to speak to a student honour society that I advised. Despite his very advanced age, he agreed. He arrived to toting an oxygen tank. It was obvious that he could not hear despite hearing aids and that he was nearly blind. I thought that a disaster was in the making and that there was no way that he could give the promised keynote a speech, but my fear was unwarranted. He in fact gave a wonderful half hour speech full of anecdotes and jokes. By the end of the speech, he had the students eating out of his hand. The essence of his speech was to use his life story to inspire others to a life of inquiry and science. The recent memorial by the New Mexico legislature was not an attempt to redefine the use of the term planet by scientists, but rather an attempt to honour a marvellous educator who used his fame to the benefit of the students of New Mexico."

P: That's quite a persuasive letter.

S: Right. So just a personal story about Tombaugh. I thought it was very interesting. And yeah, I mean, I figured that the New Mexico legislature was trying to honour their resident Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto not affect scientists. I still think it's it's confusing when you-

E: Couldn't they find another way to honour them?

S: Yeah, just build a statue, do something else, build a planetarium. But, yeah, it just gets confusing if you try to meddle in, I guess they figured it just basically would be ignored by the scientific community.

P: Well, it wasn't ignored by us, brother.

E: Yeah, right?

S: Thanks Chris for writing that email. We appreciate the information.

Herbal Remedies (26:14)

I started listening about the beginning of the year and I have gone back to he beginning and I am up to episode 30. I really enjoyed the combination of your medical expertise and skeptical outlook as you discussed toxins.

My mother-in-law, a Southern Baptist, has a non-accredited PhD in herbal medicine. You can see where our world views don't match up well with me being a scientifically minded atheist-agnostic.

She is very much the missionary for both theology as well as alternative medicine. Not only is she a true believer in herbal medicine she also practices applied kinesiology and iridology for diagnosing any and all diseases. When I confront her with my basic medical knowledge, she goes off on a rant about a conspiracy in the medical profession to suppress the truth only motivated to make money. I know I can do little to change her mind, but I would like to protect my family's heath and wallets.

I have head you address chiropractic and acupuncture. Would you be willing to do a show addressing herbal medicine as well as applied kinesiology and iridology?

I am also interested in a contraption where you stick your feet in a tub of water and they apply an electric current and the water turns black. This allegedly pulls the toxins out of your body. I have found references to this as ion detox and as aqua detox.

I have found some wonderful information at Skepdic and Quackwatch. I would appreciate any other sites which may help me mount counter arguments.

I have recently come out of the skeptical closet and your show has made a difference in my ability to articulate many of my thoughts.

Thank you for a wonderful show.

Michael Vogler
Denver, CO

S: Next email comes from Michael Vogler from Denver, Colorado. And Michael writes, "I started listening about the beginning of the year and I have gone back to the beginning and I am up to episode 30. I really enjoyed the combination of your medical expertise and skeptical outlook as you discussed toxins. My mother-in-law is a Southern Baptist, has a non-accredited PhD in herbal medicine. You can see where our worldviews don't match up well with me being a scientifically minded atheist agnostic. She is very much the missionary for both theology as well as alternative medicine. Not only is she a true believer in herbal medicine, she also practices applied kinesiology and iridology for diagnosing any and all diseases." Actually, they don't, they don't diagnose diseases, they diagnose illness. "When I confront her with my basic medical knowledge, she goes off on a rant about a conspiracy in the medical profession to suppress the truth, only motivated to make money."

J: She's absolutely right. She's right.

S: "I know I could do little to change her mind, but I would like to protect my family's health and wallets. I have heard you address chiropractic and acupuncture. Would you be willing to do a show addressing herbal medicine as well as applied kinesiology and iridology? I have found some wonderful information that skeptic and quack watch. I would appreciate any other sites which may help me mount counter arguments. I have recently come out of the skeptical closet and your show has made a difference in my ability to articulate many of my thoughts. Thank you for the wonderful show." Well, thank you, Michael.

J: Yeah. Thanks, Michael. That woman is really, she's got a, she's got a full bag of-

E: Non-accredited PhD in herbal medicine.

S: Right, not accredited PhD, which is worthless basically.

P: Key term here is non-accredited. For God's sake.

S: I don't think I can go into all three today, but on this show, I did plan on talking about herbal medicine for a moment. First of all, I want to point out that our friend over at the QuackCast has a recent episode on herbal remedies, which I highly recommend.

P: So at the quack, what Steve?

S: Quack podcast.

J: We interviewed him, Perry, we interviewed him and he also, I've listened to all of his episodes and he goes into excruciating details and from what he said on our interview, he said he actually writes out everything and he plans the whole thing out. So he's basically reading a paper that he wrote on the topic. And it's great. The show is very good, very informative.

S: Yeah. This is a Dr. Mark Crislip from QuackCast.

P: A very specific show like that you would think he'd be very detailed.

S: Yeah, it's good. So you listen to his show on herbal remedies. It goes into a lot of the specific herbs, but I just want to give you my quick take on it. The bottom line with herbs is that they are drugs. That's it. They're drugs. They contain chemicals, often many chemicals. The chemicals have a pharmacological action in the body. That is the very definition of a drug. So there, there's nothing different about herbs from prescription pharmaceuticals or-

P: They're all natural, right?

S: The fact that they're "natural" is completely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with anything.

J: Oh yeah?.

S: In my opinion, they're very bad, dirty drugs. And this is why. So basically the process that the pharmaceuticals go through is that, often they do may start with the observation that, and some kind of plant r herb or something has some has been observed to have some kind of medicinal effect and what is typically done is that it's analysed for its constituent parts, what chemicals are in here, the chemicals are isolated, identified and studied individually. And what some of the things that we learn about them is the so called pharmacokinetics, which is basically what they do in the body or you know, how the body affects them and the, and their pharmacodynamics, which is basically what they do to the body. So are they cleared by the liver? Are they cleared by the kidney? How does a dose translate into a blood level? How what's the half life? How does it, is it protein bound? Does it affect other medications? Does it enhance or inhibit the action of other medications? And then of course, what are its effects? What are its side effects? How much of it does it take to kill somebody? This data is collected preclinically in animals. And then if it looks safe and like it might be effective and is useful pharmacologically, I mean, a lot of stuff, first of all, it can't be absorbed by the, by the gut or it's broken down. So you have to know, does it, can this be taken orally? Does it need to be given as an injection or rectally? Some medications are given rectally. And then it goes to human trials for definitive information about safety and efficacy. And if it goes on the market, when you buy medication, whether over the counter prescription, you're getting a very, very pure and carefully regulated known dose of a known substance with all of these factors, very, very thoroughly delineated. Of course, it doesn't make it a magic, magic bullet, right? I mean all drugs have risks, all they all have side effects, but it means that at least we know what we're doing and we can make a reasonable decision. With herbs, they bypass all of that, they don't know what's in there. They don't know how much of it is in there. Each pill will have a different amount of different active ingredients, depending on what part of the plant it was taken from.

J: How and when it was harvested, everything.

S: Crop of plants, it was taken of the season year to year, everything. So in fact, there have been numerous studies which show that putative active ingredients in common herbal remedies, like St. John's wort can vary as much as 17 times. You may be getting 17 times the dose from one pill to the next.

E: Two bottles of St. John's wort each might have different, might say the same thing, but they'll each have a different amount of actual active ingredients.

S: They'll have actual different ingredients. And the ones that they do have can vary by, by many or by orders of magnitude.

J: And on top of that, the things that they say the drugs do, the herbs do typically they don't even do those things.

S: Yeah. Well the final question is do the drugs do, do the herbs work as drugs, but the thing is like a lot of alternative, like homeopathy and whatnot, we could say these are flawed in principle. They can't possibly work. You could be very definitive about it. The thing about herbs is they are drugs. They could actually have effects in the body. They actually might do something. So you can't dismiss herbal medicine in its entirety as, as being impossible because it isn't, you really have to look at every herb individually. And ask is there, what's the evidence for its safety for its effectiveness for particular indications? When you do that, what you find is first of all, none of the popular herbs that are being used have been proven to be safe and effective for what they're actually being sold for. Many of them have been shown definitively not to work at all for what they're used for. My favorite example is Echinacea for colds. It doesn't work at all. Then St. John's wort, which I mentioned, it's a little bit different. You know, there's some actual active ingredients there that plausibly might have some antidepressant effect, but they exist in a very low and variable dose. It's been shown not to work in major depression.

P: I even had my St. John's wort frozen off, but Steve this speech of yours, which is wonderful and nice and good is not going to move a woman like this guy's mother, one iota, you are after all, an accredited medical doctor. You are the poster child of the conspiracy.

J: It's all for the money.

P: Why are they going to believe you?

S: I go to all the meetings. I get my weekly check.

P: They're just going to say you're in the pocket.

J: We're not talking to her. We're talking to her son-in-law and trying to help him arm him with some information on how to battle.

E: Perhaps her Southern Baptist sensibilities will kick in and over and trump everything else.

R: This is the mother-in-law?

J: Perry, we're all well aware of what you're saying. You're totally right. But you know, the people that listen to our show aren't, aren't these people. It's people that want to get this information so they can go and use it in their own right.

P: I know.

E: They want to help their families.

P: The guy's trying to move her. I don't know. Is it the mother of the mother-in-law? It's a good question.

S: Mother-in-law.

R: It's the mother-in-law in that case abandon it, just let it go. Don't touch it. Don't go anywhere near it. The next time you go over for dinner, you keep your mouth shut.

S: But his point is, his point is that the mother-in-law is preaching to the extended family. He wants to protect his wife.

J: You're a hypocrite by the way, Rebecca.

R: Hey man, I don't mess with mother-in-law.

P: Just put the add-on bubble like the back of the Jetsons car and put the mother-in-law back there.

S: The mother-in-law bubble? But he needs information to defend his family from this quack mother-in-law.

R: Protecting the rest of the family is good. Yeah.

S: So that's legitimate. That's legitimate.

R: Don't do it around the mother-in-law though, because, and actually now I'm being serious, the best way to combat it is not to attack the mother-in-law in front of the rest of the family. I would get the information.

S: Don't make it personal. Make it very detached.

R: I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even get into a discussion with the mother-in-law because it'll probably only make her more defensive. I would just let the rest of the family know in on her ways.

J: He's got to educate the kids and the other people that come in contact with her and let them come to their own conclusions.

R: Yeah, I didn't say that he couldn't.

P: Steve, even though you've given it several times in the past, why don't give them the quick, what is the answer to the conspiracy? What do you say when they pull out the conspiracy?

J: The answer is Steve drives a shitty car. Okay. If he was on the take, if he was making side money, Steve would be rolling with class, but he's not. So there it is.

E: No, instead he's in a POS.

S: I'll have a link to an article I wrote about it. That goes into the discussion in depth. I focus a lot on the cancer cure conspiracy, which is abject nonsense that doctors are hiding a cure for cancer, but it's the same kind of arguments would apply to any sort of medical industrial complex conspiracy nonsense. It's not a monolithic entity is the, is I guess the bottom line is that the medical care is multiple institutions multiple different kinds of people with different jobs and different interests and et cetera, and academics who actually control the standard of care aren't on the take, they don't make money for practicing medicine. They're generally poor and salaried like me. So the conspiracy theories are based upon really a naive sort of view of what the medical establishment is, how it's even constructed. We have an interview this week with Robert Lancaster. So let's go on to our interview.

Interview with Robert Lancaster (37:21)

• www.stopsylviabrowne.com/home/

S: Okay. Joining me now is Robert Lancaster who runs the StopSylviaBrowne.com website. Robert, thanks for joining us on the skeptics guide.

RL: Thanks for having me.

S: So why don't you start by telling us how you got interested in doing all of this?

RL: Well my previous skeptical site, StopKaz.com was sort of winding down the subject of it, was stopping. And there are people on the JREF forum who were egging me on to find another focus for another skeptical web and-

S: That's the James Randi Education Foundation just for our listeners.

RL: Sylvia Brown was always near the top of that list, but the more I looked into her behavior the higher on the list she became until she was definitely the focus of my next site. And that's what the stop Sylvia Brown site resulted from.

R: And Robert, maybe just for our listeners, they might be interested in hearing a brief bio on your previous StopKaz site. Can you tell us just a little bit about Kaz and what went on there?

RL: Well, Kaz Jacobson is the woman and she's a woman who spoke at my mother's church a few years back and she had very hard to believe story of wealth and fame culminating in her having been in the North tower of the world trade center on 9/11, 2001, when the attack happened and that she escaped heroically after being trapped in an elevator in a burning elevator shaft. And the story went on and on and my mother told me this story and I found it extremely hard to believe and started doing research on the woman because she was going to be speaking at my mother's church again soon and found out that none of her claims had any sort of a basis on the web and the website became what was the result of that research.

S: And what ultimately was the outcome? Was she discredited and just faded into the, into the woodwork?

RL: After seeing how much was up against her. I hate to say this, but it appeared that she faked a suicide attempt. There was a a television show in Australia, which is where she was at the time who was doing a report on her. And the night before it was to be broadcast she checked into the emergency ward, supposedly having attempted suicide and they pulled that episode. It was never shown. But from that time on, I have heard no more reports of her speaking in front of churches with her 9/11 nonsense.

R: I think it's fair to say that that website was a huge success. So we were all pretty excited to see you take on Sylvia Brown.

RL: Thank you.

R: So how has that been going for you?

RL: Well, it's been an interesting ride so far. I've got several articles more than a dozen articles up on the site and then talk about some of her spectacular failures on the Montel Williams show and elsewhere. And I've been getting a lot of traffic and a lot of response. And most recently you've been getting a response from within Sylvia's camp actually.

R: Really? What have you been seeing from them?

RL: Well first off back in February, late January, early February, I'm mixing up the timelines, but at some point her her attorney, one of her attorneys notified me that I needed to take the side down because the name stop Sylvia Brown used words Sylvia Brown, which she had trademarked and they were trying to bully me into taking the side down, saying I was infringing on her trademark. And that was nonsense. And I got a lawyer who wrote up a letter saying it was nonsense. And I put both her attorney's letter and my attorney's letter up on the site. And they, I have yet to hear any more from that attorney since she received my attorney's letter.

S: Yeah. That's an interesting read actually, those letters again, just for those two or three listeners who may not know who Sylvia Brown is, she is a self-proclaimed psychic who has made a career out of speaking with the allegedly speaking with the dead of people and telling people what's happened to their loved ones. She's a frequent guest on the Montell Williams show. Uh, she has been a foil to James Randi and other skeptics. James Randi has her Sylvia, his Sylvia Brown clock on his website because marking the time over which she has refused to take his challenge as she said that she would on television. So we've talked about her a lot on our program before because she is the psychic du jour, if you will. And she's pretty sleazy. And I think that the this so-called slap suit that she threatened you with is a pretty good indication of that. I mean she trademarks her name and then tries to use that as a basis to say that I guess nobody could, can refer to her now unless she approves it because if you referring to her as infringing upon her copyright.

RL: I recently started to discover that I'm not the first that she's done this with. And in fact, she has shut down a number of her fan sites over the years. Because she doesn't want people teaching her philosophy. It appears from what I'm hearing and I'm writing an article about it that similar to what Scientology does, she doesn't want anyone else showing any of her scriptures. She wants you to buy them from her basically.

J: And it's money-based, of course.

RL: I can't see any other name for it, but she she has shut down a number of fan sites and forums that discuss her because they end up talking about her Novus Spiritus Church and her supposed philosophy. And she doesn't want that. And she shut a number of them down. And in fact, I was told today that you shut another couple down today. I haven't verified that, but recently a fan site has opened up that she is supporting, and that's gosylviabrown.com. That's her correct response to mine. And in fact, in part, it looks like a satire of mine, but there's some question as to if the person who's running that is actually a fan or is somebody with a direct connections to Sylvia Brown. And that's something I'm working on another article about.

R: Have you considered having your lawyer contact go Sylvia Brown for copyright infringement?

RL: That was one of the things I considered, but I try not to put frivolous lawsuits out there.

R: Oh, right. That's right. You're on the good side. I forgot.

RL: I try.

J: Robert, why is it that she can't affect your site? Legally she can't shut you down, right?

RL: Correct. It's a matter of freedom of speech. Anyone has the right to put together a site that is critical of a public figure or a product or a company and use that person or product or company's name in the name of their website, it's freedom of speech and her trying to shut my site down is what they call a slap at the strategic lawsuit against public participation. It's trying to shut someone up is basically what it means. And there are laws that prevent that. And luckily California, though, the state in which both Sylvia Brown and I live has some pretty strict anti slap laws in place to prevent people from filing or from successfully filing this very type of lawsuit that she tried with me.

J: So she just had her lawyer send you a letter to try to muscle you a little bit.

RL: Exactly. I would imagine if the lawyer's worth anything they knew that it was just a bluff, but you know, cheap bluff and it might've worked, but it didn't.

J: Well, if you need any thug power, give me a call, man. I'll come right over.

RL: Appreciate it.

R: I don't know. Have you ever seen Robert? He's a pretty intimidating looking guy, very mild mannered on the podcast, but you know, in person.

S: Now, Robert Sylvia has had some pretty astounding failures on the Montel Williams shows and other shows. And we've mentioned some of them on our show before, but in your experience, what's been her one or two most spectacular failures?

RL: Well, the one that was probably the most dramatic and it's gotten the most press was her having told the parents of Sean Hornbeck, the boy who was missing for four years and recently turned up alive, she had told his parents on the Montel Williams show a few years back that he was dead. And my side was the one to to break the news that she was she had a connection to the story. And in fact, it went up on my site the day that Sean Hornbeck turned up alive and that caused a lot of press attention, including the New York daily news and Howard Stern show. And eventually the Anderson Cooper 360 shows that got her a lot of undesirable attention.

R: And can I just say to anybody in the audience who hasn't seen that go to YouTube and try to find that Anderson Cooper clip, I know it's surfing around and it is so much fun that one. And he also did a follow-up after he had Robert on with Sylvia's, what was it, her press agent that was on?

RL: I believe it was her business manager.

R: Okay. Yeah. And he just he tore her a new one. It was really great to see. It's so awesome to see skeptics getting more prominent in traditional media like that.

J: Robert, how active is she? Does she have her hands into a lot of different things?

RL: Well, she she has her church, she has self-hypnosis classes. She is on the Montel Williams show every Wednesday twice a day. I believe they have a new one in a repeat usually, or sometimes two repeats. She's occasionally on Larry King. She has her church, Novus Spiritus that seems to be of avoiding paying taxes, if you ask me, but I don't have that for certain. She makes a lot of money. She's got somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 books that she has written, a lot of them bestsellers. She charges $750 for a 20 to 30 minute phone reading. And she claims to do 20 readings a day, six days a week. So you add that up and that's a lot of money.

R: She's got those cruises and conferences too. I heard she's going to be at a big conference in Vegas coming up. Have you thought about attending something like that?

RL: Sure. She has her lectures that she the Hay House lecture, Hay House is one of her publishers and she has the lectures that she gives around the country in like 20 or 30 different cities. I haven't heard of the Vegas one. Is that the, just one of her lectures or something bigger?

R: No, it's a big conference of pseudoscientific crap. I think she's going to be there with a couple of others.

S: At the CrapCon, 2007?

J: They don't have to send out emails cause all the psychics know what it is.

R: Right.

RL: I had considered appearing at something like this, but now after the Anderson Cooper shows and my face is known to her and her people I'm not quite sure what kind of a reception I'd get.

R: Yeah, that's true. Randi used to dress up in disguise whenever he went to see the faith healers. Maybe you could try something like that. A red beard.

RL: A little bit more difficult to disguise than Randi, but it's-

R: True.

S: Now you said you were pretty quick with the Hornbeck information. Do you keep track of some of her big predictions, just waiting to see how they unfold?

RL: A few of them, but why I was so quick on that particular one, however, was thanks to some emailers. I had just gotten home from a day's work and checked my email before hitting the sack and there was an email saying that she had indeed been involved in the Sean Hornbeck and I had just gotten home. I hadn't even heard of Sean Hornbeck. Turned on the news and then went to cnn.com and then started the searching and put together an article on it pretty quick and got it up on the site. Within a couple of hours and thought the, that would pretty much be the end of it, but it really took off from there.

S: Yeah. That's one of the great things about having a net presence is that you can have a thousand eyes and ears out there and you become a clearing house for information.

J: And you publish the news immediately.

RL: That was one of the main hopes I had with the site. That's the way that the the StopKaz site ended up working. People who knew of her and knew of some of her shenanigans would email me and I was hoping the same would be true of the Sylvia Brown site. And it has been, almost every Wednesday I get emails from people saying, did you see what she said today on [inaudible].

J: I didn't know she was on that show every freaking week.

RL: Every Wednesday.

R: I just found information on that Las Vegas conference. So if you're interested, Robert, it's May 5th to May 7th in Vegas. It's called I Can Do It 2006. And it has Sylvia and Doreen virtue PhD, spiritual clairvoyant, Carolyn Meece, spiritual teacher, and a whole laundry list of weirdos and whack jobs.

J: I can poop by myself.

RL: Sounds like a loads of fun.

J: Hey, Robert, I also read on your site, you actually got you interviewed her former husband.

RL: One of her former husband. Yes.

R: How many does she have?

RL: Oh, I believe it's four.

R: Oh my God. Are you working your way through them all? Are you going to try to get her other three next?

RL: The other three, one of them is just so long ago. I don't think he'd be of much use, but the other is one is Val Browne, where she got her name Browne. And he's the one that they went up under fraud charges together for that mining incident they were selling shares in a mine that didn't pay off and got in trouble for it. But she was charged with fraud, but ended up pleading guilty to charges of selling securities without a license.

S: She pled to a lesser charge.

RL: Yes.

J: You did interview one of her former husbands and he gave you some information or he gave, you just kind of get, what did he do? He kind of coloured the kind of person that she is. He gave you just a little background information.

RL: Correct. That was a Gary Dufresne. I was the man that she was married to just before she was married to Vel Browne. And I spent a couple of hours with him and his current wife, Reed Dufresne back in February and compiled some clips from the interview I taped with them and put together an article which recently went up on the site and cause the fur to fly in Camp Sylvia.

S: Was there anything particular on the interview that got them upset?

RL: Well, he says in the interview that he does not believe that she's a psychic at all and talks about her so-called psychic son that they, that is also his son Christopher Dufresne, who only charges $450 for a 20 to 30 minute phone reading. Evidently he's only 60% as accurate. He said that he had spoken with Christopher at one time within the past few years about his so-called psychic career. And Christopher said that he was not happy with it and he didn't like doing this, but that his mother had told him basically, what do you care? You're never going to talk to these people again. Just tell them what they want to hear and get their money and go.

R: Wow. That's pretty damning.

RL: He also spoke of an incident back when Gary Dufresne spoke of an incident back when they were still married. He and Sylvia Browne. At that time she was giving tarot card readings at parties that they would have, and he said that one time after one of these parties, they were washing dishes and he asked her, well, why do you do that? Some of these people are actually going to believe you and you know, it's just nonsense, why do you do that? And he said that she told him basically if if they're stupid enough to believe it, they deserve to be taken. That's not an exact quote. You can look on my site for the exact.

S: Yeah, the site says screw them, anybody who believes this stuff ought to be taken.

RL: There you go.

J: That pretty much sums it all up right there for me, man. That confirms something I've said on, on our show a couple of times where I said that woman goes to bed at night and puts her head on the pillow and she knows she's full of it. She knows she's taking people. She's not a true believer. You know, that's the impression I get.

RL: I'm with you there. I don't know how she sleeps.

S: Now, Robert, I mean, while you're doing is great, it's great to get this information out to the public and everything, but realistically, someone like Sylvia Brown, she knows what she's doing to all appearances, the history where people like this is that it's really hard to make a dent into what they're doing. I mean Randy calls them unsinkable rubber duckies, no matter what you do to them, no matter what, how you embarrass them, whatever, they always seem to come back because the people that they're catering to are gullible. They're not very good critical thinkers. So realistically, what kind of practical hopes do you have for your efforts in terms of affecting Sylvia Brown's career?

RL: Well, I can't give you a dollar figure, but I know that I've had an impact on her income. I hear several times a week from people who tell me that they were looking for her website so they could order up one of her $750 readings. And luckily, my site is pretty high up in the Google rankings and they saw my site and read it and decided to save their $750. There is an impact of some sort on her. I know that from what I'm hearing, and I have no proof of this, but from what I'm hearing, all the recent attention she got via Anderson Cooper and the New York daily news, which was all from my site's article about Sean Hornbeck has had an impact on her and people are constantly asking her about it and she has to my knowledge has stayed out of the public eye since then, other than a few of her normal appearances. It's having an impact on her, whether it will actually stop her who knows? I mean, after all back in the eighties James Randy stopped Peter Popoff by exposing him as a total fraud, but he's back. So who knows what the ultimate effect is going to be, but all I can do is keep doing what I'm doing and hope for the best.

S: Yeah. I mean, we're with you. Sometimes it feels like all you could do is maybe mitigate the problem, do some damage control. I don't know of any cases of like a real permanent victory over frauds like this. They always seem to have, they're like the Terminator. They just keep coming back and coming back. No matter how many times you kill them off.

RL: Well, people have that need to believe and they will put their heads in the sand and ignore any evidence that conflicts with that belief to some degree. But I get emails, other emails from people telling me I used to believe in Sylvia Browne. Totally. I was a fan. I've bought all of her books. I've been to her lectures. I read your site. I was horrified. I no longer believe in her. I'm throwing all my books away. I get those emails.

S: So that keeps you going, huh?

RL: Yeah, definitely.

S: Yeah, absolutely. Cause there's certainly no money in doing what we do. No, all the money is on Sylvia's end of the spectrum.

RL: I received an email yesterday that deeply affected me from a woman who has recently been diagnosed with she didn't say if it was terminal, but a very serious illness and she's having trouble coming to terms with it. And even though she says she's got a PhD and is an intelligent educated woman, she was considering getting a hold of Sylvia Browne to see if Sylvia Browne could give her some answers that the doctors couldn't give her. Even educated people fall for this crap. And she was one of those people who was looking up Sylvia's site, found mine, read it and sent me this email thanking me for not only saving, she said, not only for saving me a few hundred dollars, but for saving my dignity.

R: That's great.

RL: And I was really touched by that.

S: Yeah. I think that's again, one of the things I noticed doing, we're doing even before the podcast is that because of the internet, you can have a huge impact on individuals because people who are seeking information at the time they are seeking specific information, you could be they could, you can come up on the search and you could provide them that critical bit of information they need to basically just wake up to reality a little bit to keep them from completely going down the rabbit hole.

J: Hey, Robert, I have another question for you. When did you become a skeptic and get involved? Like how did your story behind the whole thing?

RL: Well I've been a skeptic to one degree my entire life but when I became active in the skeptical community was back during around the time of 9/11 actually was about the time that I coincidentally joined the JREF forum and started getting together online with other skeptics and talking about what we thought of various topics. So it's only been what six years now that I've been active within the community and it's only been the past four years since I started the StopKaz site that I've been proactive with my skepticism.

S: Well, Robert, thanks so much for coming on the Skeptics Guide. We enjoyed talking with you.

RL: Thanks for having me on.

S: And good luck with your site.

RL: Thanks.

Science or Fiction (1:00:37)

Question #1: MIT nuclear power expert warns that the US is running low on uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants.

Question #2: Scientists have identified a specific brain structure that, when damaged, removes any emotional inhibition of killing others.

Question #3: New study shows that following breast augmentation surgery women report lower self-esteem and sexual satisfaction.

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

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts. Two are genuine and one is fictitious. And then I challenge my challenged panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake.

E: Hey!

P: Now this your announcement there of this week, science or fiction, Steve reminds me of something.

S: Really?

P: I was checking out the sgufans.net page by Mike there puts that together, does a lot of work. I had just discovered recently that if you click on the podcast list, if you click on each episode, it opens up a fact page. Very funny as all quotes in there and facts about the show. I didn't even realize that was there at first. And I can certainly see that that's a, puts a lot of work into that.

R: We talked about it last week.

P: I just discovered that. Now shut up.

S: Perry's a little slow.

P: In his post today he specifically goes out of his way to root for Jay over me in the science or fiction rankings. All right. He says, go Jay, you're almost overtaking Perry. I am therefore withdrawing all support from Mike and will no longer have anything positive to say about him.

S: Okay.

R: Poor Mike.

J: So Perry, what you're, what this boils down to is you're jealous because one out of the, what 15,000 listeners we have right now, one of them likes me. And he and I are buddies. Who do you got? You had Luna, you had the first fan, you had the very first fan.

R: All right. All right.

S: Anyway, let's go on. Are you ready? Stop delaying the inevitable. Here it comes. Number one, MIT nuclear power expert warns that the U S is running low on uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants. Item number two, scientists have identified a specific brain structure that when damaged removes any emotional inhibition of killing others. And item number three, a new study shows that following breast augmentation surgery, women report lower self-esteem and sexual satisfaction. Perry, you go first.

Perry's Response

P: Well, the second one sounds perfectly reasonable. I mean, you you change your brain and all kinds of crazy things happen to your behavior. The first one was we're running out of uranium.

S: Yep.

P: Okay. And it's pretty rare and hard to make. And the last one about women. Yeah. I mean, I think women who are growing their breasts artificially of low self-esteem to start with, I think that one's true. Did I just say they were all true?

S: Yeah, you did.

E: Yes, you did.

P: Okay. So then the least likely true one would be the, well, the killing one that's very specific. I'm going to have to go with uranium.

S: Okay. Rebecca.

Rebecca's Response

R: Okay. You know what? I'm going to go with the boob one actually.

S: Okay.

R: I'm feeling, I was going to say something bad there. I'm going to go with the boob one.

S: The lower self-esteem following breast augmentation.

R: Yeah. I don't, I'm thinking that, that seems really natural, so to speak. But I think that's false.

P: Yeah, that Anna Nicole was swimming with self-esteem.

S: Jay.

Jay's Response

P: Do you have an aneurysm?

J: I'm still debating over here. I think I remember touching or reading these breast implants situation over here. I'm not sure which of the two.

P: How are yours working out?

J: USA running low on uranium. Pretty good. I got baloney tits.

R/B: Oh my God.

J: The USA running low on uranium. I'm not going with the breast thing. I'm going to go with the USA running low on uranium. I don't think that's true.

S: OK, Bob.

Bob's Response

B: Where the hell do we even get our uranium?

E: Uranium4Us.

B: He said the reserves.

J: They mine for it, Bob.

B: I don't think we have much of a way of reserves. I could be totally wrong. It just totally striking me as at a whack, even though the other ones don't sound very likely either, but I'm going to go with uranium.

S: Okay. Evan.

Evan's Response

E: I'll say that it is the uranium one as well, because the professor there, the study was done at UCAL, not MIT. So therefore that one's wrong.

S: All right.

P: That's assuming the doctor is telling the truth.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: The guys are all going with the low uranium.

E: You think 38, baby.

S: And Rebecca is going with the breast augmentation causing low self-esteem being fake. And you all agree that scientists have identified a specific brain structure that when damaged removes any emotional inhibition of killing others. You all believe that that is true. And that is in fact science. Very interesting study, actually. What they looked at is there is a specific kind of moral dilemma where you, you present people with a situation where they have to do something bad in order to prevent something even worse from happening. So for example, one of the examples given in this particular study, if you had a friend who had AIDS and told you I'm going to go out having unprotected sex with a bunch of people and therefore you knew that they were going to infect a lot of people, some of whom were going to die. And just, this is purely hypothetical. In the hypothetical world of this study, you're offered the choice of, of killing them or letting them basically go on their unprotected sex spree, what would you do?

P: You can't just report them.

S: You got to think of this as an artificial hypothetical in order to force this moral dilemma. There's other ways, there's a lot of questions that basically give you the same choice where you can kill somebody directly in order to prevent them from killing a lot of other people down the road. So if you did any kind of cold calculation about the situation, it would make sense to kill the one person to save the many people. But people have a hard time doing that. There's an emotional inhibition against directly harming or killing somebody. So they say, even though they might know that it's mathematically, ethically, the "right thing to do", they can't bring themselves to say that they would kill somebody directly.

P: Which of my friends is this?

S: It doesn't matter which friend did it.

P: As a matter of fact, it does. Yeah.

S: For the purpose of the study it was the hypothetical friend.

P: Oh, I see.

S: However, they looked at 12 people who had no brain damage, 12 people who had damage to the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and 12 people who had damage to some other part of the brain. But the people who had damage to this particular prefrontal cortex area had absolutely no compunction about killing people. They just did not have that emotional connection or inhibition about directly causing harm to somebody else. So they made the cold calculated decision without any real dilemma. Everyone else had a lot of emotional conflict over making that choice or could just, could not bring themselves to do it. So they've basically localized this part of the brain that gives us the inhibition, the emotional connection to directly harming other people. And that's interesting.

R: Question - is that just in regards to when they're making a decision based on what's going to save more lives? Or are they basically sociopaths now who don't really see any moral problem with killing?

S: Yeah, they basically they, it disconnects them emotionally from the act of harming other people. So yeah, they're kind of sociopaths.

P: You could go to court and say my prefrontal gizmo.

S: And it's interesting that it's so that that part of the brain is so specific. You know?

B: Yeah. That's what strikes me is that it's so localized.

S: Yeah. Yeah. But you would think that there would be probably pretty strong evolutionary pressures for us to be hardwired, like not to kill people.

P: Not to butcher each other? Yeah.

S: So it's definitely neurologically very interesting.

P: Yeah, it is.

Steve Explains Item #1

S: Now the guys all went with the uranium being low and as it turns out, that one is in fact, science. That one is, that one is science guys. So there's a Cambridge-

P: I feel like Bobby rigged, it's so embarrassing losing to a woman.

S: -and who published a paper basically saying that we're running out of uranium. Now, and the nuclear power industry has been very short-sighted over the last 20, 30 years, basically about 20 years ago it was decided that we weren't going to be building more nuclear power plants and the US from that point forward has basically been coasting on their nuclear power supply on their uranium supply. Most of it, somebody asked where we get it from. We actually get a lot from Australia and Canada and from the Ukraine. Other countries who have been beefing up their nuclear energy infrastructure have been buying up the uranium and we haven't been, and the problem that we can run into is that we could be sort of the last people to buy the uranium that's out there, which means we're going to pay a lot more for it , than what you could get it for if you buy it earlier on. We also don't have the infrastructure of refinement plants to refine and enrich the uranium so that it's usable by nuclear reactors. And there really isn't that much uranium in the world. So they're actually actually saying that we have to maybe use more sophisticated refinement techniques so that we could make maximal use of the uranium that there is, we have to build more enrichment plants that we can actually start to meet our demands. Right now, the amount of uranium that the United States is purchasing is only about 60% of what we're actually using. And we're actually depleting our reserves. Also, a lot of the uranium we're buying is coming from decommissioned Soviet nuclear weapons, and that's going to run out in a few years. So, cause that's obviously a finite and limited supply. And the reason why he thinks that this is important to bring up at this time is because of the whole global warming thing, there is renewed interest in nuclear energy. And in fact, we plan on building more nuclear power plants and yet our uranium supply is, if anything, dwindling. So there's a huge disconnect there between increased demand and decreasing future supply. So something we have to pay attention to now before it becomes too late.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: Which of course means that Rebecca stands alone in being correct this week. New study shows that following breast augmentation surgery, women report lower self-esteem and sexual satisfaction is fiction. Now, Rebecca may have had an advantage here being a woman.

P: I feel like Bobby Riggs.

R: I have to say that this is one of the first ones in quite a while that I've had to just totally guess. This is pure psychology that won this for me. I figured that sounded like the most believable one. So I went with that one.

S: You've got me again. Actually, the study shows that women experience increased self-esteem and increased sexual pleasure and desire following breast augmentation surgery, the exact opposite. This was done by-

P: Cause there's more guys banging them.

S: Yes, Perry, cause there's more guys banging them. That's why.

P: What did they do it for Rebecca? Don't get snide with me. What they have breast implantations for?

R: God forbid if a woman should ever improve something for herself.

S: Actually a lot of them do it because they have low self-esteem or because they think that it will enhance their self-esteem. And in fact it works, but it's also true that I think when women think they are attractive, that makes them more sexual. So that's sort of a component of female sexuality. So that, so there's the fact that they felt that they looked more attractive, made them more interested in sex and made them enjoy it more.

R: I have to say that this, this does go in the face of some previous studies that have shown that.

S: I mean, there are previous studies which show that women who seek this kind of cosmetic plastic surgery have esteem problems to begin with. This one was specifically looking at the baseline before the surgery. And then three months later seeing what was the change in their self-esteem.

J: Does the skeptics guide a fit officially support breast augmentation now?

P: You know it brother.

S: I think we're agnostic with regards to breast augmentation. Neutral.

R: And you know what? You'll all probably be agnostic for the rest of your lives concerning breast augmentation.

Skeptical Puzzle (1:13:46)

This Week's Puzzle

Between us, if I raise my goblet to you, and open my heart, on the grounds of conjecture, what psuedoscientific act am I performing?


Last Week's Puzzle

If you take the 9th, the 22nd, the 8th, the 20th, and the 18th, and put them inside a vulva, what do you have?

Answer: A Jesus Fish
Winner: Smuell

S: Evan, can you tell us last week's puzzle?

E: Yes, I will. All right. If you take the ninth, the 22nd, the eighth, the 20th, and the 18th, and put them inside a vulva.

P: We've worked in breasts and vulvas in the last 60 seconds of the podcast.

R: A new high.

E: And there were some, oh, some interesting posts. It was a lot of fun reading everyone's commentary.

R: Did anybody get it?

E: So thank you all for contributing. However, yes. Yes. Mr. Smuel S M U E L.

P: Can we get some pronounceable names on the forums, please?

E: It would be nice, but Smule, Smule got it that the, a Jesus fish.

J: What? I still don't get it.

E: We're all familiar with Jesus fish. The ones you see on the bumpers of cars on t-shirts and so on and so forth. It's a Christian symbol.

P: It goes good with loaves.

E: And actually, the Christians adopted it from pagan symbols.

P: Just like Christmas.

E: And the fish itself is the pagan symbol for the vulva and the numbers 9, 22, 8, 20, and 18 represent the Greek letters that spell out the word ichthis, which of course means fish well, or in Greek actually means Jesus Christ, son of God and saviour. So the letters iota-

R: Vulva.

E: -chi, theta, epsilon, sigma. Those are the five Greek letters inside the fish symbol.

R: And now you know that Jesus has a problem with the vulva.

E: Your Jesus fish. So now every time you're driving down the road, everyone, you see those, you can kind of giggle to yourself, but, ah, there goes a vulva.

P: Vulva on a Volvo. I like it. Very good. That was a good puzzle.

S: So, Evan, tell us this week's puzzle. Here is this week's puzzle between us. Between us, if I raise my goblet to you, and open my heart, on the grounds of conjecture, what psuedoscientific act am I performing? Good luck, everyone. This one's a noggin.

J: I'm scratching already.

S: Well, thanks Evan.

Quote of the Week (1:16:03)

'I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.'Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, 1901

S: Bob, you have a quote for us this week?

B: Yeah, I got a quote from Dez on the boards. Thanks Dez for this funny quote. This is from Simon Cameron, US Senator, 1901. He said, "I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here. We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years and it's time it should be stopped."

S: This whole science thing?

R: That's a good one.

J: I'd like to, before we check out tonight, I would like to, again, ask everyone to please visit our site and vote for us on digg. If you have a moment, just pop over and give us some support. We really appreciate it. And I'd also like to thank the continued influx of people joining the boards. We're getting more and more people every week. I'm surprised how many people are joining us.

P: And we have gotten some great reviews on iTunes lately. We really appreciate that.

S: We appreciate all the good reviews. Spread the word. Listen, this week, the challenge is we want every listener out there to get one other person to regularly download and listen to the Skeptics Guide.

R: Yeah. Think of it like a skeptical pyramid scam.

S: Right. So it's skeptical pyramid scheme. Thanks everyone for joining me.

J: Thank you, Steve.

E: Thank you, doctor.

J: We'll see you next week.

S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, 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.

References