SGU Episode 944

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SGU Episode 944
August 12th 2023
"A hydrothermal vent displaying many red tube worms and white microbial mats." Photo: Schmidt Ocean Institute
SGU 943                      SGU 945
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
It is hard to tell which is worse: the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true.
Harriet Martineau, English social theorist
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Masks and sickness, Cara's dissertation

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. Today is Thursday, August 10^th, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello, everyone.

S: So a few things going on here. First, as you can probably tell, I am sick. I have an upper respiratory infection. I am ill. You know, it sucks.

J: Do you feel really sick or you just sound sick?

S: I do. Yeah, it's one of those. It's like the worst day of a cold, where you have the achiness everywhere and a fever and the nose is running like a faucet.

B: I remember those days.

S: Tested negative for COVID. It doesn't really feel like COVID. It feels more like a summer enterovirus, which is I think what it is. But we just like a few weeks ago stopped wearing mandatory masks in the hospital and this is how long it took me to get sick. I haven't had a cold in three years or whatever. Two weeks after no mask policy, I get a cold.

E: I mean, does that mean you were primed to get it in a sense?

S: No. I just had patients with runny noses sitting in front of me without wearing a mask. That's what it means.

C: Yeah, it just means sick people are sick. It's like teachers.

S: People don't feel obliged to wear a mask.

C: It's like the minute teachers went back to that way.

S: So I tested negative for COVID. I did wear a mask all day. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

C: Yeah. Whenever I have just the slightest weirdness at work, I'll wear a 95 for a few days just to be safe. Because yeah, you're in really close court. Like when I'm doing therapy, it's like closed door, tiny room, one on one for an hour. We're going to catch whatever anybody has if they have something.

S: You're exchanging your microbiota.

C: Oh, yes.

E: Steve, slice a red onion and put it in a stocking and wear it to bed tonight.

S: Okay, sounds good.

E: All right.

S: Thank you, Pastor Evan. Tomorrow is Jay's birthday.

C: Happy birthday, Jay.

E: Happy birthday, Jay. Jay. You made it.

J: I made it, yep.

C: He made it.

E: Again.

S: One more circuit around the sun.

C: Yep.

E: It's good to make it.

S: And Monday, Cara, something's happening in Cara world on Monday, I think.

C: Something's happening in Cara world.

B: Sleep in that day. Take it easy.

E: Yeah. Turn your alarm off.

C: Monday, I'm defending my dissertation.

B: Whoa.

C: Whoa.

E: Oh, my gosh.

C: Can you believe?

S: No.

C: I can't.

S: Do you think everybody out there in podcast land knows what that means?

C: I think they do generically.

E: Yeah, we have a perception.

S: All right, Evan, what do you think it means?

E: You are, you basically wrote a book and you have to get up and orally defend it against a group, a panel, effectively, of people from your field.

C: Okay.

S: Not bad.

C: All right.

S: What about you, Jay?

J: It's a great question because I was going to ask you to clarify that a little bit. From what I understand, they read your dissertation and then they're going to basically shoot holes in it. And you have to sit there and explain to them like everything. And their job is to kind of make it difficult for you to, to you're not just going in saying, yeah, I wrote this, like they're going to be like, what does this mean? Explain this in detail. How do you correlate these two things together? All questions like that, that make you have to really explain your position.

C: Yeah.

S: That's close enough, Cara give us a technical definition.

C: I don't know. So different schools do it differently. My school calls it the FOR, the final oral review. And that is, in essence, their dissertation defense. Some schools call it a thesis. Some schools call it a dissertation. My hunch is that thesis is British and dissertation is American.

S: I also thought thesis was masters and dissertation was PhD.

C: I did too. But my multiple dear friends of mine went to Caltech and they had a doctoral thesis at Caltech. But I think that's Caltech being like, we're like the Brits. I really do. So I'm not sure. I think in some respects, they're interchangeable. But yes, when I did my master's degree, I defended a master's thesis. Now I am defending a doctoral dissertation. When it's published in ProQuest or whatever publishing platform they use, it is called a dissertation. But sometimes they're called theses.

S: So just a quick definition that I find is that a thesis, I think, is the more general term for defending your area of knowledge in a graduate program while dissertation is specific to a PhD.

C: That's so weird that some PhDs still use the word thesis.

S: Anyway, it's all language.

C: Yeah, it's all language.

E: Micrometer, micrometer.

C: Exactly. That's fun. So basically, I wrote this, you put it well, Evan, book. Mine's actually not that long, if I'm being 100% honest.

E: Oh, it's a novella, then.

C: Well, it's long enough that when I first opened the document, I don't know how many pages it is because Microsoft Word has to pitch up.

E: Oh, well, then it's long enough.

C: Give me a minute and I'll tell you. OK, it's speeding up now. It is 185 pages. But we have to remember that includes appendices and references and everything.

S: Which is work. It's not like that's not work.

C: Right, exactly.

S: Appendices and everything is like a huge part of the work. Your literature is huge.

C: Yeah, it's true. So basically, you write this thing, and the way that my university does it, and I think that this has become more common practice, to be honest, which is why I'm not overly stressed about this. Maybe I should be. Is that you have a committee and your committee is made up of different people. Different committees have different compositions. My school requires a committee of at least four. So I have a committee chair. I have a second reader who's on faculty. I have a third reader who's on faculty. And that individual is also a methodology expert. So with psychology research, they can be quantitative or qualitative. And so you need a different type of methodology expert for different types of dissertations. And then you have what's called an external reader, and that's pretty common. So that's somebody from another university who's unbiased, who had nothing to do with your work, who sits on your committee, and they're expected to be a subject matter expert. So I was lucky enough to get somebody who's like a really big deal in the field of gerontology and who's published on end of life stuff before. So that's really great. And then you all convene. And basically, I take, 45 minutes an hour to present my work, make a PowerPoint, go through it, show the lit review, show the research that I did, show the results, show the discussion, the limitations, all that kind of stuff. And then, yes, they ask you specific questions. Why did you choose to do this? Why didn't you do it this way? If you could do it all over again, what might you change? What were some of the things you had control over? What were some things you didn't have control over? And then they usually close the door and go rubble, rubble, rubble, rubble, rubble, and discuss amongst themselves and bring you back in. And then from what I hear, it's always, congratulations, doctor. Maybe not always, though, because some people don't pass, which to me blows my mind.

S: So my, having watched this, my wife go through this process, so I had basically front row seats, even though I wasn't doing it myself.

C: Did you go, though? Did you attend her?

S: No, no, I couldn't do it.

C: Oh, you didn't.

S: But she has a thesis advisor, right? And it doesn't show you a thesis advisor who, made sure she passed. You know what I mean? Like their job is to usher you through that process.

C: They should not get you to this point. They shouldn't be like, sure, we're ready for the defense if your paper is not publishable.

S: If you fail your dissertation, that means they failed because they were supposed to get you to the point where you were ready.

C: And this should be publishable quality, like this should be 100% contributing to the field. This should be contributing to the state of the literature. And so I've already gotten really beautiful and lovely feedback from everybody on my committee, which is really nice. My dissertation went through a few different rounds of edits, but the overwhelming feedback was just really positive and really supportive. And so I'm excited about that.

E: So is this more of an exercise or is, what's the net positive coming away from having to orally defend?

C: So there's a couple different things that can happen. For some people, it's the first time everybody is in a room together. And so because of that, things come up that didn't come up before, because each of your committee members should have read it and given you feedback individually. But now you've got a group of colleagues that are sitting down going, oh, yeah, maybe if this, maybe if that, what about that? So it is important to some extent that you're all together and having a discussion. And also, your paper doesn't have to be locked in by the time you defend it. Mine is as close as I can possibly get it. But things will come up during the defense that I can then further dial in.

S: Before you submit it for actual publication.

C: For proofreading, exactly. Yeah. So like you, they call it the final draft that at my university, at least they have to approve my final draft before we can even schedule the defense. But the final draft is not actually final. It's like VF point one. So if anything comes up during the defense that they want me to tweak or that we all agree would make the most sense to tweak, I can still do that before I submit it to proofreading.

S: It's like peer review in a way.

J: How often do people actually legit fail this process?

C: I don't think it happens often at all, but I'm sure it does happen. And I'm sure that when people do fail, like Steve, you were saying it's a failure of the committee. It also probably, I would assume, has more to do with personality problems with like people being like, well, no, I'm just going to push forward anyway, like just like not listening to the advice that they're given.

S: Again, from watching the process, my sense is that you don't fail like at your defense. The defense is kind of the formality cap at the end. But with people who fail to get their PhD, they never get to defend it because they didn't get to that point. They just never finished their project or they never got to the point where their advisor said, yes, you're ready to defend.

C: And I think for me, what I find is really interesting is among a lot of my colleagues who are significantly younger, right, because I'm doing this later in life, this part stresses them out to no end because I think a lot of people have a fear of public speaking. Or they have a fear of feeling, how do I feel confident about my work? And it's so funny to me because this part's the easy part for me. Like I did the hard work already. Like anything they ask me, I know the answer to because it's my research. You know what I mean? Like I did it. I wrote the damn thing. And so for me, and also I'm a professional science communicator, like I do this for a living.

E: Yeah, I can't undersell that.

C: A hundred percent. So even though there's like people are like, oh, it's the defense. It's so stressful. It's so stressful. I'm like, no, no, no. The stressful part was writing the damn thing. Like I'm good to go now. So I'm excited.

S: Hundreds of hours of work that got you to this point.

C: Yeah, seriously. It's so exciting to me because it's just one more checkbox. So once I finished this on Monday, I have two more weeks of seeing patients and then I have one week of paperwork and then I'm done with my internship, which is the last requirement to earn a PhD in clinical psychology.

S: And you get awarded a PhD on a specific date that you know yet or no?

C: The way that they do it is it's not about graduation day. They award it to you the last day of your internship if everything else is submitted.

S: Got it. It will be for you, right?

C: It will be for me. Yeah. I shouldn't have so many changes that it doesn't take a few days before I push it through to the publisher or the proofreader. So for me, yeah, I'm lucky. A lot of my colleagues are in a really weird boat where our internship ends on August 31^{st/sup> and they have postdocs starting September 1st. So they had to take their vacation the last two weeks. They had to save it all year. Take it the last two weeks and everything has to be backdated for early because you can't start a postdoc if you don't technically have a PhD. Like they will not let you be a postdoc if you don't have a doctorate. So they had to do some like weird manoeuvring in order to make that work. But I'm lucky I don't start until January for my postdoc. I get to take time off and chillax. Yeah.}

S: All right. Well, congratulations. We'll keep us updated this last few weeks of the process.

C: Will do.

"5 to 10 Years" (12:36)

• [url_from_show_notes _article_title_]

• Loch Ness Monster

S: All right, Evan, you're going to start us off with a special report. This is a 5 to 10-year follow-up on the Loch Ness Monster.

E: Yes. Yeah. Every now and again, we like to revisit news items to see how a particular subject has come along in the last five to 10 years, as we like to say. For example, Bob, invisible cloaks are 5 to 10 years away, right?

B: Well, what wavelength are you talking about? Invisible? No.

E: How about this one, Jay? Everyone will be walking around with their personal droid or robot in 5 to 10 years. That's something we actually talked about years ago.

J: That can't come fast enough.

E: No kidding. All right. But here we are and it really hasn't happened yet. Cara, 5 to 10 years, CRISPR technology will grow by leaps and bounds.

B: Well.

C: Applications for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

E: Absolutely. This is why it's good to take a look back every now and again when we talk about things 5 to 10 years from now, let's see exactly where we went. Sometimes, yeah, things have progressed and other times, no pie in the sky. So it just so happens it was five years ago when I reported on the latest attempts of researchers to find hard evidence of the Loch Ness Monster. Here's a very, very quick reminder for you. It's Scottish folklore, the Loch Ness Monster, Nessie, which is sometimes called by. It's a creature said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It's often described as large in size with a long neck and one or more humps protruding from the water. The size of the creature varies. Their descriptions over the years have ranged everything from 6 meters in length to 17 meters in length. By all accounts, it's unusually large, especially for a creature in that particular body of water. Now, many had believed that the creature could be a plesiosaur. Large aquatic faring animals, which arose from the time of the early Jurassic Epoch, about 175 million years ago. But legend of this particular beast rose 90 years ago. And thanks to the media of the day, offering vivid accounts of people describing what they saw as a sea serpent or a dragon. Plus et chance, right? But the bottom line is that 90 years of evidence of Nessie's existence is entirely anecdotal. There have been a few disputed photographs and sonar readings thrown into the mix over the years. However, nothing concrete. Well, just five years ago, and perhaps you remember this news story when I presented it, a global team of scientists scoured the icy depths of Loch Ness using environmental DNA equipment in an experiment that hopefully would discover if Scotland's fabled monster really does or did once exist. Environmental DNA, it's a surveillance tool that's used to monitor for the genetic presence of an aquatic species. For example, here in the United States, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they're using eDNA, as they call it, to monitor for the genetic presence of bighead carp and silver carp, which are two species of Asian carp, and they are invasive. So it's good to know if these invasive species are in fact getting in to our fresh waters. Whenever a creature moves through their environment, they leave behind tiny fragments of DNA, skin to scales, feather to fur, feces to urine, slime to scum, secretions and emissions, the likes of which you probably don't want to know about. However, this DNA can be captured, sequenced, and then used to identify that creature by comparing the sequence obtained to large databases of known genetic sequences from hundreds of thousands of different organisms. That's quite a data bank. So this is what the researchers had done. They took 250 samples of water taken around the lake, from the center of the lake, and the very depths of the lake. These DNA samples were captured, extracted, sequenced, and then compared against global DNA databases to reveal a comprehensive picture of what life has been in Loch Ness. All the way down to bacteria. Fish everything in between. So bacteria to fish in all manner of creature and everything else you can think of. And here were the results. They can't find any evidence of a creature that's remotely related to a Loch Ness monster, a plesiosaur, or anything else within those sequence data samples. So no, the plesiosaur idea did not hold up based on the data that was obtained. One thing they did find was a good amount of eel DNA. So they said, well, maybe it's plausible that you've got some kind of giant eel in this.

C: That's not plausible.

E: Well the eDNA doesn't speak to the size specifically of the creature, but the eel DNA, right? But other than that, you can basically rule it out. But the next big hubbub on the heels of that research was another study showing that plesiosaurs had lived in fresh water. That was new information. This was an oops kind of moment because some very intelligent, I'm sure, very intelligent person over at the University of Bath thought it was a good idea to contaminate their scientific findings with a throwaway comment on how plesiosaur in Loch Ness, it being a freshwater lake, is, and I quote, on a level or on one level plausible. Oh my gosh, that was a feather in the cap of Nessie believers everywhere. If you go back and look for the headlines for that science news item, it was almost universally, they all said, scientists say Loch Ness monster plausible. So that was the end of that. But did the science really finally break in the direction of the true believers? No, because there was a major problem. You see, Loch Ness is only, what, 10,000 years old. And the plesiosaurs went extinct well before Loch Ness was formed. So 66 million years at the same time of the dinosaurs, they were gone.

S: But they say there were connections between Loch Ness and the ocean or whatever. But of course, if there's salt, that's a salt water in a freshwater body of water. So usually people, even though it's not a fish, usually animals don't live in both. But so would you guys remember when we were in Scotland and we were visiting the Highlands and our tour guide, who was a local, very awesome tour guide, she asked us where we wanted to go and we said, take us to the most beautiful lock in the area. And she was like, thank goodness you didn't ask me to take you to Loch Ness. We're good n that.

C: I remember that. She was like, do you guys want to go to Loch Ness? And we were like, I don't think you know who you've got in your bus right now. And we had lots of long conversations.

J: I mean, if it was nearby, I would have been like, sure. I don't mind.

C: I know, but it was super far.

S: It was far. It was way out of the way.

E: It would have tagged on an entire half, extra half day.

S: You would have missed a whole bunch of stuff for that. That's why she was like, but, but she must get that request a lot. And have to like reorganize the day and miss all the cool stuff, just so people could see the Loch Ness, you know.

C: And it's probably so frustrating because I'm sure, I mean, we haven't been, but I'm sure that the Loch Ness is really beautiful, but it's also become this like tourist trap.

E: Yes. And that's the point Cara, because here we are five years later. Okay. And this is despite that scientific evidence continuing to pile up that there's no Loch Ness monster. It doesn't dissuade true believers. No, you see the irony of Loch.

S: eDNA thing is like, that's the last nail in the coffin.

E: I mean, pretty much really. I mean, where else are you going to go from there as far as, as far as being able to come up with something tangible.

S: But Evan, they have blurry sonographic images, of the bottom of the Loch, it's just-

E: And stories about stories about people seeing.

S: Somebody's third cousin's brother said that they saw it once.

E: That's right. Yes. But no, no. No amount of evidence will stop people believing, about fantastical and mythological creatures. Because look, listen to this guys. A few days ago, here's, here we are five years later from that. And here's where we've come to media around the world. I don't know if you guys saw this almost simultaneously my newsfeed practically blew up with this one. BBC, ABC, AP, CBC, CBS, Washington Post, New York Post, Fox, NPR, and let's not forget TMZ, all of them. I mean, really in concert in near perfect synchrony, they reported, this was this past weekend, August 26th and August 27th of this year. So a couple of weeks coming up, a new search for Nessie will take place. Reportedly the largest search in the last 50 years. Okay. Well, is it another scientific search such as the one for the eDNA back in 2018? Oh, no, no, no. Is it a concentrated effort by paleontologists to search for the plesiosaur, maybe specifically for a plesiosaur? No, it's not that either. It's a promotional event organized by the Loch Ness center, in Drumnadrochit, sorry, pronounced that incorrectly, I'm sure. And looking for a volunteer research. And a volunteer research team called the Loch Ness exploration society, apparently. So yeah, not a scientific one, but simply, as you were saying, Cara, tourist trap stuff, people, the local economy basically has promoted this thing to get people to come and participate in this latest, greatest search here, here you go. But all of them quoted the event organizers here. Are you fascinated by the legendary tales of Nessie and the elusive Loch Ness monster? Do you have a passion for unraveling mysteries and exploring the extraordinary? Join us as a monster hunter volunteer in this exciting quest, the biggest search for the Loch Ness monster in 50 years. It's our hope to inspire a new generation of Loch Ness enthusiasts by joining this large scale surface watch, you will have a real opportunity to personally contribute towards this fascinating mystery that has captivated so many people from around the world.

C: It's so sad because I feel like when it comes to this kind of stuff, like you remember the, what were they called? The horse heads, the cupids?

E: The, it began with the Cali.

C: The cupids? The Celkies?

E: Those enormous metal structures, the horse's heads.

C: Oh my god, Scottish people listening right now are screaming the answer to us. Kelpies.

B: Yes.

C: The Kelpies, yes. There was like ancient mythology that was tied to them and the history of that ancient mythology is fascinating and beautiful. And you can talk about it in that way. And it can be something that's an interesting piece of history. You don't have to like feed in to being like, and it's real. That's the annoying part.

S: But the media can't resist it. UFOs, Bigfoot, they will always, they know it's BS. They don't care.

C: Of course they do.

S: If you can squeeze that into a headline, you're golden. That's it.

E: That's it.

C: And how stupid do they feel though? Like these like serious journalists when they have to write something like that.

E: Oh my gosh. I don't know. Maybe they give it to people who, on the desks or something. Yeah, my gosh. I mean, but again, I don't think we have to judge on about all the evidence that's piled up over the years suggesting there is no Loch Ness monster and the eDNA kind of cap that as Steve said. But here we are. Here's where we come in the last five years. Legitimate scientific inquiry and research using eDNA techniques five years ago, all the way down to calling all believers cry from the local economic concerns in order to drum up more interest and future interest in the search for the best known creature in cryptic history. And sometimes, hey, things evolve and get better over the course of 5 to 10 years. And sometimes in that same time span, things devolve into further depths of nonsense and pseudoscience. This is a case of the latter.

S: Well, give us an update in another 10 years.

E: Absolutely. Or in two weeks. Oh, we saw the Loch Ness monster. We got photos and things. Yeah, I got drunk and I saw something.

S: All right. Thanks, Evan.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Depression Does Not Cause Cancer (24:59)

• Depression and Anxiety Are Not Cancer Risk Factors

AI vs Robo Calls (35:27)

• A new weapon in the war on robocall scams

J: ... So, let me play for you--

(Cara and Evan chuckle)

C: I hate these.

E: (groans) This is for science, Cara. We have to suffer. (Cara groans)

J: All right. Here it is. [funny sound from "La La Dog" video plays] Oh, sorry. That's not it.

(Rogues laugh)

Cement Supercapacitor (51:27)

• Using Cement for Energy Storage

...We talked in the past^{[link needed]}

Hidden Undersea World (1:01:58)

• Surreal Deep Sea Discoveries Include Glitter Worms and Upside-Down Lakes 

Who's That Noisy? (1:11:36)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Optophone scans letters and converts to audible tones

[Intermittent, musical, mechanical beeps]

New Noisy (1:17:10)

[Background hissing, foreground crackling]

what that noisy is

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups

Follow-up #2: RFK Jr. on Tik Tok (1:27:28)

C: ... It's like the "Underwear Gnomes". It's like, "Then a miracle happens."

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Science or Fiction (1:36:13)

Theme: Oldest living things Item #1: The oldest extant branch of life is the ctenophores, which go back 700 million years. Item #2: Polypodiophyta, a type of fern, is the oldest extant plant genus at 380 million years. Item #3: The record for the slowest evolving vertebrate goes to the elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii) which has changed little in 450 million years.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Polypodiophyta fern
Fiction	Ctenophores, 700Mya
Science	Elephant shark

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Evan	Polypodiophyta fern
Bob	Elephant shark
Jay	Polypodiophyta fern
Cara	Elephant shark

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:50:05)

It is hard to tell which is worse: the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true.  – Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), English social theorist, often seen as the first female sociologist.

Signoff

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

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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Today I Learned

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

References